Subject: xml2lisp machine?

From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2003 13:02:48 +0300 (EET DST)

"XML machine the successor to von Neumann?"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/32452.html

What they are not telling us is that it is easy to transform between
the well-known parenthetical representation of LISP code and XML
representation.

I won't be surprised if this is what they did under the hood.
                                             --- Omer
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From: Oleg Goldshmidt <[email-masked]>
Date: 22 Aug 2003 18:26:25 +0300

> I won't be surprised if this is what they did under the hood.

Given that "programs and data are the same" can be found before page
20 in any Lisp or Scheme book (OK, I have not checked, but you get my
drift), I would not be surprised if they resurrected a LispMachine
without telling their investors (who would panic in an instant).

To quote the article:

"The practical effect of this is the ability to develop new
applications with less code."

Sounds as if it is lifted directly from Paul Graham...

It seems that the new new thing is doing it in XML...

-- 
Oleg Goldshmidt | [email-masked]

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From: "Tzahi Fadida" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2003 19:42:57 +0200

yes but you have to understand that this incarnation could be significant.
e.g. if some of you know dov dori OPM from our IE faculty IS department, you could in principal very
easily create less ambigous and simpler to create code directly from the diagrams. meaning, 100%
visual programming.
Currently we went with the java code generation, but maybe this could be another alternative.
Programming to the masses?
only time will tell....

* - * - *
Tzahi Fadida
MSc Student
Information System Engineering Area
Faculty of Industrial Engineering & Management
Technion - Israel Institute of Technology
Technion City, Haifa, Israel 32000
Email [email-masked]
Technion Email: [email-masked]
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From: Tzafrir Cohen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2003 22:49:51 +0300

> the well-known parenthetical representation of LISP code and XML

Natually: It saves you the bother to write a parser that will build a
source tree from the source file.

But then again, I figure nobody (besides Real Programmers) will 
actually write such code manyally, as it is probably a messy syntax.

> I won't be surprised if this is what they did under the hood.

s/XML/text/ while reading that article. And you'll sudenly realize that
this is nothing new, just a change of media.

And besides: there are good reasons for seperating code from data.

Seems likeyet another scripting language...

-- 
Tzafrir Cohen                       +---------------------------+
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir/ |vim is a mutt's best friend|
mailto:[email-masked]       +---------------------------+

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From: Tzafrir Cohen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 23:26:53 +0300

On Fri, Aug 22, 2003 at 07:42:57PM +0200, Tzahi Fadida wrote:
> yes but you have to understand that this incarnation could be 
> significant. e.g. if some of you know dov dori OPM from our IE 
> faculty IS department, you could in principal very easily create 
> less ambigous and simpler to create code directly from the diagrams. 
> meaning, 100% visual programming.
>

What do we have so far?

We have a company that sell a relatively cheap development environment.
It has an "xml" buzzowrd written on it. 

Omer then added a speculation on how it is implemented, and that it
could be very effective.

You added a speculation that it would fit for a certain interesting
project.

A couple of reminders: XML is intended to help build a united toolchain
an thus allow much standartization and code reuse.

However we have a different task here: parse a program code and make good 
use of it, efficiently. I am not well aware of the current technologies,
but I figure that the xml toolchain does not have much to add here. And
recall the existing frameworks raleted to Java and to .Net that involve
portable byte-code.

many programing languages can compile their own code on-the-fly. List was
probably the first. And really-good "scripting" language (practically
all of them are half-compiled) has such capability.

Those languages tend to have a small part written in C (or whatever) and
most other things implemented using the languages's code. 

Anyway, this field is not intersting for me, as this silly company is
getting a patent on it. Why would I bother looking into a 
paten-encumbered field?