ubf for Rebol?
[1/6] from: bry::itnisk::com at: 8-Nov-2002 15:41
I recently switched over from learning Erlang to Rebol, as I thought
Rebol had some uses in the product I'm working on right now, but it's
stuff like UBF http://www.sics.se/~joe/ubf/site/home.html (UBF is a
language for transporting and describing complex data structures across
a network) that shows what I liked about Erlang to begin with.
They've already got UBF drivers for Erlang, OZ, Tcl and Java, how about
Rebol!?
[2/6] from: greggirwin:mindspring at: 8-Nov-2002 10:20
Hi Bryan,
<< They've already got UBF drivers for Erlang, OZ, Tcl and Java, how about
Rebol!? >>
I haven't seen any REBOL implemenations. Looks like it could be a fun
project, but I already have too many fun projects in progress myself. :)
--Gregg
[3/6] from: jan:skibinski:sympatico:ca at: 8-Nov-2002 11:20
Thanks for posting it Bryan. I took cursory look at the documentation
but have not formed any strong opinion about it yet. It seems to
me that it is in similar spirit as XML-RPC is (as opposed to Soap),
but at the binary level.
I know very little about Erlang, except some buzz around it. Its
position among functional languages is somehow curious. On
one hand it is an untyped language, on another - it is quite a successful
practical language. As a result FPL community likes to point it out
as an example of FP success - notwithstanding its lack of types.
At the bottom of his whitepaper Joe Armstrong writes:
<<
UBF was inspired from a number of different sources:
[cut]
The type notation in UBF(B) is similar to that suggested by
Phil Wadler and Simon Marlow for work on an Erlang type checker.
[cut]
The protocol definition language in UBF(B) is similar to a suggestion
of Wadler for typing Erlang processes.
[cut]
>>
Do you see what I mean? FPL gurus were quick to add type
checking to Erlang to suit their needs. And as I recall,
they did it very early - in a year or so after Erlang was announced.
Phil Wadler was instrumental in Haskell development. He wrote
many good articles, many of those about monads. He is also
a co-inventor of java extensions: Pizza and Generic Java.
Simon Marlow works for Microsoft Research and is highly
involved in several Haskell projects: hierarchical libraries
and GHC.
> They've already got UBF drivers for Erlang, OZ, Tcl and Java,
> how about Rebol!?
It certainly would not be a very big deal to implement it.
But who would pay for the development? Another words,
is there any strong motivation for doing that?
Best regards,
Jan
bryan wrote:
[4/6] from: bry:itnisk at: 11-Nov-2002 11:37
Jan Skibinski wrote:
>It seems to
>me that it is in similar spirit as XML-RPC is (as opposed to Soap),
>but at the binary level.
My opinion is basically that is presents a simple and extensible
language for describing binary information. The comparison to Soap or
XML-RPC is appropriate to UBF(B) which has a protocol description
language. There are three modules I guess I would call them, UBF(A) ,
UBF(B), and UBF(C).
>I know very little about Erlang, except some buzz around it. Its
>position among functional languages is somehow curious.
I found Erlang to be a nice cross between Haskell and Rebol, feelwise
(Haskell in that it was functional Rebol that it was quite a bit easier
than Haskell and also more focused on the practical IMHO), I was going
with it instead of Rebol for a while because it was dead easy to pick up
whereas Rebol's syntax can still sometimes throw me for a loop(hope
there's no pun there). If I were to be working on any heavy telephony
apps erlang would probably be my choice. Also has very nice libraries
for working with ASN.1
>Phil Wadler was instrumental in Haskell development. He wrote
>many good articles, many of those about monads. He is also
>a co-inventor of java extensions: Pizza and Generic Java.
Yeah Wadler is also instrumental in building Xml Query so he's got his
misses as well. :)
>It certainly would not be a very big deal to implement it.
>But who would pay for the development? Another words,
>is there any strong motivation for doing that?
Probably not, I am often hit by these wild enthusiasms when I come
across something new and cool, until the cold light of the next workday
reminds me I still have my own stuff to implement.
[5/6] from: joel:neely:fedex at: 12-Nov-2002 14:04
Hi, Bryan,
Since you mention it... ;-)
bryan wrote:
> My opinion is basically that is presents a simple and extensible
> language for describing binary information. The comparison to
<<quoted lines omitted: 3>>
> apps erlang would probably be my choice. Also has very nice
> libraries for working with ASN.1
OK, we've got XML for human-readable structure/content, and ASN-1 for
binary structure/content. Why do we need YAML? (Just curious!)
-jn-
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Joel Neely joelDOTneelyATfedexDOTcom 901-263-4446
[6/6] from: bry:itnisk at: 13-Nov-2002 10:56
Joel Neely wrote:
>OK, we've got XML for human-readable structure/content, and ASN-1 for
>binary structure/content. Why do we need YAML? (Just curious!)
why does anyone ever need another programming language than their first
Turing complete one?
I don't want to get into my philosophy of the necessities of change in
any field of human endeavor, even if that change should lead to worse
results - the indicator of which would be the switch from Keynesian
economics over the last couple of decades as popular fields of economic
studies, often replaced with economic theories that do a worse job of
prediction. This is not to indicate that I think UBF would be worse, it
seems very comprehensible such as for example the irc example at
http://www.sics.se/~joe/ubf/site/ubfb.html
ASN-1 can be difficult to work with?
Although a propos that difficulty, for quick ASN-1 try
http://www.oss.com/products/visual.html
A visual ASN-1 tool! It's pretty cool I think.
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