Lambda the Ultimate

So, just recently I read The Third Manifesto, and since I'm interested in programming languages, dissatisfied with SQL, and thinking about databases I figured I would post some of my questions here.

I don't know that much about modern type systems, but in the book, their discussion of type systems seems a little archaic compared to the sorts of things people bring up here. If there is anyone more knowledgable than I, I would appreciate some insight into how their stuff fits in the grand scheme of things.

Also, I recall in Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming they discuss transactions and constraint based programming and do some connections with databases, but it mostly just left me wanting more. Has anyone successfully added the "Relational Model" to a programming language and integrated into the type system in a nice, and theoretically justified way?

I'm sorry if my questions aren't quite coherent. I don't know enough to ask it, but it seems like there are strong connections to their work with other areas of programming language research, but that perhaps the two camps have not gotten together and seen to integrate the two areas.

Oh yeah, I've read enough of DB Debunkings to realize that C.J. Date and company can be a bit ornery, but I just want to see how these two things intersect. I'm definitely not part of the camp trying to clamour for "Object Oriented/Relational/whatever" database, just someone trying to understand the theoretical aspects of databases in the context of programming languages.

What is o:XML?

It's a dynamically typed, general-purpose object-oriented programming language. It's got threads, exception handling, regular expressions, namespaces, and all the other things you would expect from a modern language. And it's expressed entirely in XML.

Why?

And so we return to the question: Why o:XML? My preferred answer would be: Using the same format for code as we use for data allows us to think slightly differently about the code. The application is not only a runtime executable, magically incantated by the source code -- it is structured data, information, a document!

Astonishing!

John Meacham has set up a print-on-demand bookstore for Haskell-related books at CafePress. There are only a few books there at the moment, but they tend to be things that are otherwise out of print, for instance Simon Peyton-Jones and David Lester's Implementing Functional Languages. In this particular case, Amazon has one used copy for $204, but you can get a brand new one from the Haskell bookstore for $18.50.

Mila takes a minimalistic approach to language design: As much as possible is delegated to libraries, the rest is a small set of language constructs. Hashtables, lists, objects and namespaces are all the same thing, for example. Other features: All parameters are named and have default values, variables are strongly typed, and there's a nice syntax to write objects with indentation.

I am the author of the language and all feedback is very welcome.

Readers of LtU sometimes want to read posts on one (specific or vague) topic. Editors can post to departments, others post to uncategorized forum. In the course of discussion, the topic can change drastically. Discussions are often inter-topical.

Therefore, wouldn't it be beneficial for readers that any posting person can assign a keyword for the post from the list of available? In this way each thread will acquire a polynomial key that can be matched with reader's criteria...

Is it technically hard to implement, or does it look like another crazy idea of me?

I am having trouble wrapping my mind around the semantics of a pure functional programming language. In writing my current programming language I chose to treat the variable assignment expression:

x = 5

as the creation of a function named x.

x = 5 is semantically equivalent to:

x = fn () -> 5

Is this sort of 'variable assignment' considered to be an example of pure in the FP sense?

NOTE: if x (in the above example) were to be redefined, a new closure would be created with the associated value.

Sorry to ask such a trivial question, but I am having trouble finding semantic discussions concerning simple functional programming idioms.

Best regards,

M.J. Stahl

It's a milestone season for Eclipse. The Eclipse C/C++ Development Tools project has released CDT 2.0 final for Eclipse 3.0. They posted some nice CDT screenshots. There are screenshots for Eclipse, too.