Introduction and misc ideas

[Alexis Read]

On Mon, 3 Jun 2002, Cyril Hansen wrote:

> >
>
> Hi again,
>
> >I would regard Tunes as a "viral"
> >program starting from a small kernel, first only able to interface with
> >external parts through libraries (e.g. mappings for the OS'
> >C-implemented system calls, as you find in many languages); then, as
> >needed, we describe more and more properties of these external features,
> >declaratively.
> >

VHDL, ADA, Maude and other specification languages can treat external
libraries as black boxes, with the interface as glue code. Aditionally,
Maude and BOBJ can then use the interface specification to prove
properties about the library, good for proving security issues,
parallelism etc.

> > I would love to see them implemented as a library for a
> >widely-used language, despite all we can say against these languages --
> >C++, maybe Java (which might really lack higher-order capabilities for
> >this), why not Python (I regard Perl as not OO enough).
> >

Maude can implement just about any higher order capability.

> The advantage of using a largely known language is that we could
> advertise the project more easily.
> A long term goal should be to become language independent, so my
> criteria for the language choice would very practical (what language do
> the contributors know best, etc..).
>

Language independent aka inventing a new 'superset' language no?
Maude fits the bill then, libs can be any language in the same fashion as
.NET. Sadly, .NET is M$ intellectual property, and the language of choice
for it is the eternally irritating C#, not good.

> I still don't know if my proposal to belong to the scope defined by
> Tunes. Should I consider it a different project ?
>
> Regards,
>
> Cyril HANSEN
>
>
Your proposal fits fine so far - its the details that will move it in or
out of scope, in my opinion.
Regards,

 Alexis Read