Lambda (was: Refactoring in Tunes)

[John Carter]

On Tue, 11 Jan 2000, Massimo Dentico wrote:

> ... and what about rewriting (probably only a core of) Joy in assembly
> with the usual technique of Forth? A merging with Retro/Forth OS of Tom
> Novelli? What about the utility of such project as an infrastructure
> for the Tunes project? A tiny, consistent, understandable, fast environment
> with strong mathematical basis to experiment new ideas (or old ideas with
> new point of views). It's only a very modest proposal ...

Careful, as far as I can see Joy has one good idea and that is superb,
but it is not an idea that will solve all the problems Tunes is
addressing.

The heart and joy of the Joy idea, (correct me if I'm wrong), is that
by creating a simple homomorphism between the syntatic operation of
putting one symbol next to another and the function composition you
create something which is trivial to create an extensive algebra on.

The rest of the semantics of Joy is fairly stinky. (eg. only data
types are integers, strings, 32 bit sets and lists)

Thus I'm truly am enamoured with what I call the joy of Joy idea, the
semantics needs a total rethink.

John Carter

The Cybernetic Entomologist - cyent@mweb.co.za

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/5947

"If man realized that the universe, like him, can love and suffer, he
 would be reconciled." - Camus