Lambda the Ultimate

The scripting in MzTake is done in the FrTime language. This connection is based on the observation that the program being monitored is a source of events, and FrTime is designed well to receive events from the outside world. Therefore, the script programmer has the full power of FrTime (which includes almost all of Scheme, graphical routines and some rudimentary GUI support, in addition to several event-based programming primitives) for automating program monitoring.

The site includes several examples that are worth checking even if you aren't planning on installing MzTake.

I like the idea of program monitoring. It is related to the notion of instrumentation, which is of course a well known sofware design technique.

This is yet another example of how language design can help handle software engineering issues.

On the old site, wasn't it possible to send someone an email via the site? Is that possible on the new site? I don't need to be able to see an email address particularly, but it would be nice to be able to send a private message...

Maybe it's there and I just can't find it...

Thanks, as always!

Abstract: The Self system attempts to integrate intellectual and non-intellectual aspects of programming to create an overall experience. The language semantics, user interface, and implementation each help create this integrated experience. The language semantics embed the programmer in a uniform world of simple objects that can be modified without appealing to definitions of abstractions. In a similar way, the graphical interface puts the user into a uniform world of tangible objects that can be directly manipulated and changed without switching modes. The implementation strives to support the world-of-objects illusion by minimizing perceptible pauses and by providing true source-level semantics without sac rificing performance. As a side benefit, it encourages factoring. Although we see areas that fall short of the vision, on the whole, the language, interface, and im plementation conspire so that the Self programmer lives and acts in a consistent and malleable world of objects.

Featured in Sun Labs: The First Ten Years (1991-2001).

Unfortunately their website appears as a black hole if you have TCP Explicit Congestion Notification enabled. This is the default with Linux 2.6, but you can disable it with:

echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_ecn