Tunes

[Jecel Assumpcao Jr]

Francois-Rene Rideau wrote:
> 
> Dear M. Stallman,
[..... things deleted.....]
>    Dynamic partial evaluation and invalidation will be used to
> provide excellent performance in a dynamic system,
> and will encompass code generation, caching, etc.
> For instance, it will inline all dispatches and local calls,
> so that "sending a message"
> (I hate that OO terminology -- can't people just say "applying a function" ?)
> to an object in a foreign module that will increment a counter
> might be implemented as just "incl %eax", etc.
[....even more deleted.....]

Sorry, but I had to comment on this: sending a message in
an OO system is *not* the same as "applying a function"!
It might become the same if you restrict the semantics of
the system (C++, for example) or as the result of partial
evatualtion of the typical case. But just because a
partial evaluation/inlining of "a+b" is "a" for the case
where b=0 doesn't justify saying "a+b is a".

I hope Stallman answers you. I wrote him back in 1986 asking
about GNU (on paper since I didn't have email then) but I
wasn't surprised he didn't answer. I am not sure he would
like Tunes, though. Don't forget that "correctness proofs"
might have a certain attraction in Europe, but US hackers
don't normally care much about this kind of thing.

-- Jecel