A revolutionary OS/Programming Idea

[Alaric B Snell]

Lynn H. Maxson wrote:
> Alaric B. Snell wrote:
> "...He's not saying that what you do in LISP can't be done 
> graphically; just that the graphical editors for LISP never 
> really made it in the big time. ..."
> 
> I think you've given an excellent brief overview of LISP for 
> John Newman's consideration. 

Thanks! I thought it'd be handy, since LISP already fulfills parts of 
John's idea for a new generation of software development environments.

 > He needs to understand that
> LISP and its more modern derivatives stand at the forefront of 
> modern software development.  I have a deep appreciation for 
> LISP's endurance over the years.

Yeah, LISP is great - I put this at least partly down to the 
extensibility of a language with uniform syntax. You can write a library 
like CLOS, and the resulting (defclass ...) looks as much a part of the 
language as (defun ...). Which doesn't hold for languages where the 
parser needs to know about the language's feature set!

> LISP along with APL and REXX employ dynamic typing.  I 
> always enjoy it when people treat the inability to do 
> something as a "feature", in this instance to declare a variable 
> explicitly by type.  While I far prefer "fixed bin (31)" to "int" 
> because it also allows me to have "fixed dec (7)" or "fixed bin 
> (24, 6)",

Yeah, I'm a big fan of explicitly defined numeric range types rather 
than just 'implementation dependent integer' like C provides - however, 
I'd rather it was :

Temperature ::= Real(-271.(something),+Inf)

...then something based around two's complement binary notation.

> I will not say it does not have some value.  However, I will say 
> that it's sheer imagination to take the next leap of faith that 
> any program can modify itself in other than some 
> predetermined manner: it remains rule-based on rules 
> established externally which can never be internalized. 

Yep, self modifying code does not necessarily imply 'learning software'

 > It
> means that "thinking machines" per se can never occur on von 
> Neuman architecture or Turing machines.

...but that's not necessarily a true statement ;-) If we, using our 
knowledge of physics and chemistry, built a large enough con Neumann 
computer and told it to model the trillions of atoms within a brain, it 
might be sentient, unless as-yet-undiscovered physical processes are at 
work.

ABS