Re: intentional programming progress

From: Fabio Mascarenhas (mascarenhas@acm.org)
Date: Thu Apr 26 2001 - 21:43:18 MDT


Hi,

> So they truly have solved the problem of having a "metalanguage" to
express
> abstractions in, that can then be translated to concrete algorithms in any
> programming language? Or is it just hype?

>From what I've heard of .NET and IL (and I'm a subscriber to their
developers mailing list) IL is like an assembly language to the Java virtual
machine (as the .NET VM is fairly similar to the JVM), so it's nothing
revolutionary. Their ability to allow cross-language inheritance etc. is
more like Jython classes being able to inherit from Java classes (and
vice-versa), as they share the same JVM, than "intentional programming". So
C# and the CLR (Common Language Runtime) is "hype" with respect to IP.

About IP itself, the descriptions I have read are vague, so I can't say
anything about it. Maybe after more concrete papers are written about it
(nothing has come yer to ACM SIGPLAN about it...). I'm holding my excitement
until I see what it has to offer that virtual machines for high-level
languages (like JVM and the CLR) haven't. But then my background is in
software engineering, I'm wary of "silver bullets". :-)

> > I have a copy of "The IL Assembly Language Programmers' Reference" -
it's
> > part of .NET SDK beta
> >

Fabio Mascarenhas
mascarenhas@acm.org



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