Lambda the Ultimate

Lambdascope:
Another optimal implementation of the lambda-calculus

We have presented an implementation of the lambda-calculus
in the spirit of the calculational approach [...], and which
is fully in the traditions of calculi with explicit substitution
and of graph implementations of term rewriting. As far as
we know it is the first such calculus which is optimal in the sense of Levy. Moreover, as far as we know this is the
first optimal calculus featuring only a single scope delimiter
node instead of the usual two, croissants and brackets,
which by force eliminates the problems which are caused by
having more than one scope node [...]. The calculus
is simple, half a page suffices [...] to describe
it, and completely reduction-based (no semantic read-back
in the implementation). As a consequence it can be trivially
implemented in any (modern) programming language.

Remembering our discussion on atoms of PLs (such as scope and name), I decided this paper might be of interest.

PMAT analyzes IBM verbose GC traces by parsing the traces and building pattern models. PMAT recommends key configurations by executing a diagnosis engine and pattern modeling algorithm. If there are any errors related with Java heap exhaustion or fragmentation in the verbose GC trace, PMAT can diagnose the root cause of failures. PMAT provides rich chart features that graphically display Java heap usage.

Sounds useful. If anyone has the time to download and check this out, it would be interesting to hear what you think.

Charles Simonyi's Intentional Software blog has an interesting piece by Magnus Christerson, on what he calls the long tail of programming languages. It seems that (not surprisingly) programming languages exhibit the same power law popularity distribution that has been observed in so many other areas. Christerson's entry devolves into more of a marketing spiel for Intentional's products by the end, but he makes some interesting observations on niche and domain-specific languages along the way. If nothing else, the plot of programming language popularity ranking is interesting (although I find it a little hard to believe that more people program in Postscript than in Ocaml).

Centum is a basically functional language with some object oriented features. While I and a few other people enjoy the language it has not had any real momentum in terms of building a community. For example I thought that Centum might appeal to some of the people who liked LISP, since they share some ideas. One explanation that has occurred to me is that the language has obvious flaws (besides the initial implementation being on Windows). However I have not received any feedback as to what makes this language uninteresting/unwanted. Hopefully you kind folks can help me out a bit.