Tunes lurker question : Does Tunes equal an "Intentional Programming" based Computing System with knobs?

[Fare Rideau]

Dear Tunesmiths,

> After re-reading through
> Microsoft's Research documentation regarding Intentional Programming (IP), I
> became interested in what looks to me like a huge step forward in software
> implementation technologies.
>

> My question is - the test-bed that is mentioned in the above document (while
> obviously running on Windoze (IOMoveToBinNow) and C (ugh) at the moment)
> seems to provide a useful tool for increasing the abstraction level of
> programming while still maintaining (or even increasing) the flexibility of
> implementation.  Is this not what Tunes' High Level Language (HLL) is about?
>
Yes, it is one of the things the Tunes HLL is about;
however, this is only one half of the story: being able to say
that some things are moving and we want to not tie ourselves to one
temporary imperfect instance of it. The other half is being able
to say that some things are invariant and we want to preserve
them indefinitely, despite any future change in the rest of the environment.
The two approaches are dual, just like the Yin and the Yang,
just like liberty and security.

> Could not Tunes per se be initially developed from an existent system such
> as the one described?
I'm sorry I haven't read in detail the MSR IP stuff, so I can't answer.

> Is Tunes being harmed by using a textual language
> rather than an intentional tree structure such as the one described?
Tunes specifically is not based on a textual language (though it will
be boostrapped this way). Neither will it be based on syntax trees,
or any other fixed structure (though there will be several standardized
ways to exchange Tunes programs as data structures).

> Could a system such as the one described be implemented [initially at least]
> in something existent and not platform specific - ie. A web-based system
> perhaps, with the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) [which - as the
> documentation states can be viewed as a tree] as the common source package
> language, for example?
Yes, I hope so.

> Furthermore - wouldn't a system like that provide a much more flexible
> test-bed for the areas of debate regarding semantics, operational and
> optimization strategies?


> 	My apologies if the above questions are so stupid
> as to become flame-bait it wasn't Intentional :)
Not at all, you're welcome.

> PS: I am more than willing to give a fair amount of time to development of
> any system based in such technologies if some consensus could be reached on
> a plan of attack.
Thanks. I fear I've proved very bad at making any plans, though.
Any taker? I'll add you to the .rhosts of tunes at sweety.via.ecp.fr...
The internic still didn't reply to my registering as a contact,
even less about my registering a nameserver or a domain. But as my
only success through their automatic processing barrier was this
week, I'm still hoping of finally having sweety as www.tunes.org before
the end of january...

== Faré -=- (FR) François-René Rideau -=- (VN) Уng-Vû Bân -=- rideau@ens.fr ==
Join a project for a free reflective computing system! | 6 rue Augustin Thierry
TUNES is a Useful, Not Expedient System.               | 75019 PARIS     FRANCE
http://www.eleves.ens.fr:8080/home/rideau/Tunes/ -=- Reflection&Cybernethics ==