From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Delivered-To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id E6993BC75 for ; Mon, 14 Feb 2005 20:17:20 +0100 (CET) Received: from mail.physik.uni-muenchen.de (mail.physik.uni-muenchen.de [192.54.42.129]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.13.0/8.13.0) with ESMTP id j1EJHKQf007884 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=FAIL) for ; Mon, 14 Feb 2005 20:17:20 +0100 Received: from localhost (unknown [127.0.0.1]) by mail.physik.uni-muenchen.de (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2E37D20029; Mon, 14 Feb 2005 20:17:20 +0100 (CET) Received: from mail.physik.uni-muenchen.de ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (mail.physik.uni-muenchen.de [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id 15580-01-42; Mon, 14 Feb 2005 20:17:18 +0100 (CET) Received: from mailhost.cip.physik.uni-muenchen.de (kaiser.cip.physik.uni-muenchen.de [141.84.136.1]) by mail.physik.uni-muenchen.de (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8087F20012; Mon, 14 Feb 2005 20:17:18 +0100 (CET) Received: from eiger.cip.physik.uni-muenchen.de (eiger.cip.physik.uni-muenchen.de [141.84.136.54]) by mailhost.cip.physik.uni-muenchen.de (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8465F26E87; Mon, 14 Feb 2005 20:17:18 +0100 (CET) Received: by eiger.cip.physik.uni-muenchen.de (Postfix, from userid 3092) id 7E30F3CBC; Mon, 14 Feb 2005 20:17:18 +0100 (CET) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by eiger.cip.physik.uni-muenchen.de (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7B8F52D720; Mon, 14 Feb 2005 20:17:18 +0100 (CET) Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 20:17:18 +0100 (CET) From: Thomas Fischbacher To: Martin Berger Cc: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] The boon of static type checking In-Reply-To: <4210DFE1.5030208@dcs.qmul.ac.uk> Message-ID: References: <877e9a17050206221653d14456@mail.gmail.com> <200502131451.02231.edgin@slingshot.co.nz> <20050213112630.73930e19@hobbes> <877e9a1705021312525337a907@mail.gmail.com> <877e9a1705021314512ff095b9@mail.gmail.com> <877e9a1705021316114d4e10f0@mail.gmail.com> <4210DFE1.5030208@dcs.qmul.ac.uk> X-BOFH: Daemons did it MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at physik.uni-muenchen.de X-Miltered: at concorde with ID 4210F940.000 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr)! X-Spam: no; 0.00; caml-list:01 wrote:01 branching:01 abstractions:01 high-level:01 semantics:01 convincing:01 ml-like:01 cip:98 cip:98 lambda:01 lambda:01 computation:01 interaction:01 passing:01 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.2 (2004-11-16) on yquem.inria.fr X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.0 required=5.0 tests=none autolearn=disabled version=3.0.2 X-Spam-Level: On Mon, 14 Feb 2005, Martin Berger wrote: > > That's how it's supposed to be. Especially scheme tries to be nothing else > > but just the minimal "functional assembly language". So one can put other > > languages on top of it. > > the words "functional" and "minimal" may be considered contradictory as the basic > primitive of functional programming, beta reduction, is a very heavy operation that > can successfully be decomposed into more lightweight operations like: > > - state change + conditional branching. > - continuation passing > - name-passing interaction. > > (of those the third is the most elementary and general and encompasses the others). > putting any of those on top of beta-reduction generally leads to something ugly. > functional abstractions are extremely useful in many computational situations, but > they are high-level, not something one can use successfully as a foundation to start > from. several decades of failed attempts at founding (the semantics of) computation > on lambda calculus shows this. the difficulties of finding convincing hoare-logics for > ML-like languages, a problem that has really only been solved this year, and on the > basis of pi-calculus, is another indication in this direction. Now that sounds interesting! Can you provide me with a few references? -- regards, tf@cip.physik.uni-muenchen.de (o_ Thomas Fischbacher - http://www.cip.physik.uni-muenchen.de/~tf //\ (lambda (n) ((lambda (p q r) (p p q r)) (lambda (g x y) V_/_ (if (= x 0) y (g g (- x 1) (* x y)))) n 1)) (Debian GNU)