various subjects [far35]

[Gary D. Duzan]

In Message <9305270120.AA15430@clipper.ens.fr> ,
   Francois-Rene Rideau <rideau@clipper.ens.fr> wrote:

=>
=>- Blocking/Async IPC:
=> Now, the system should porvide both synchronous an d asynchronous IPC
=>as standard, and building one from the other also should be included in
=>a standard system (meta-)library, so that synchronousness of IPC be
=>independent from the kernel.
=>
   Yes, I think this is a good idea, provided that we build it with
the idea that users will generally use synchronous with threads.

=> The types of links are:
=>. existence link: forces the system to have the linked object handy
=>(the presence of a file in a directory is thus considered as an
=>existence link from the directory to the file).

   This brings to mind the idea of garbage collection. I don't
know if we can can do it properly since we can't tell when an object
discards a reference. We could have a "Free Reference" call, but an
antisocial program could easily skip it. Ideas?

=>- Gary, where can we find papers on Ellie ? on Sather ?
=>
   You can FTP papers on Ellie from
ftp.diku.dk:pub/diku/dists/ellie/papers. I believe you can get Sather
papers from ftp.icsi.berkeley.edu. They may be part of the compiler
distribution.

=>- About HLL, my motto is genericity. The HLL we choose must include
=>maximal support of genericity. This includes grouping objects by
=>metaclasses i.e. interface, and not inheritance, and accepting types as
=>parameters and any other object. Types can also be understood as
=>restrictions upon objects. To illustrate that, I wrote some
=>generic module in Pascal (more readable than C, as powerful when you
=>don't use defines and type casting). Well, Pascal is truly horrible
=>for that, and well shows the limits of C-like languages.

   To be fair, that should be Algol-like langauges. In Ellie, any
object can be a metaclass. Extending such a thing to the system
level would be the real trick.

=>- So what about that talk or irc around the net ? Mailing is too slow
=>for this project.

   I rather like it slow, since it gives me time to think things
through a bit, but I would certainly join in an IRC session if we
were to put one together.

                                        Gary Duzan
                                        Time  Lord
                                    Third Regeneration
                         Humble Practitioner of the Computer Arts