[r6rs-discuss] operational or denotational semantics?

From: Thomas Lord <lord>
Date: Sun Feb 25 22:21:53 2007

Robby Findler wrote:
> I'm just saying two simple things, really:
>
> - Such a thing has never been achieved before (feel free to draw your
> own conclusions as to why :).

[where "such a thing" refers to having both a denotational and
operational semantics with a consistency proof]


We must not be talking about the same thing.



>
> - Please, if you think you can be the first, do jump in and go do it.
> The current operational semantics is there only because we jumped in
> and did it.
>
> As to the rest of your message, I doubt I'm the most qualified here to
> answer you, but probably the best way to get the answers is for you to
> study these things yourself.
>

I started that study sometime around 1983, although, to be sure,
not concentrating on developing certain modes of personal expression
that are valued in professional academia. I grew up not far from MIT.
When my high school library discarded a copy of Milne & Strachey,
I rescued it from the dump. Dana Scott, when I was an anonymous
undergrad passing through his world with still-naive questions, turned
me onto Martin-Lof. I enjoyed SICP, when it came out, though I
regarded it as a fairly incremental improvement over an earlier introductory
text by Wirth. I've implemented or worked on a fairly substantial number
interpreters over the years. I cut my lisp teeth on Franz, and spent a
kind of lisp-adolescence digging deep into early versions of GNU Emacs.
I get a lot more of the quiet jokes in this field than you do -- sometimes
even cracking a few of my own.

Please refrain from speaking down to me, if we don't always quite
understand one another.

I'm not speaking from some naive intellectual curiosity. I'm
speaking out because the current draft is, in my more-informed-than-
you-seem-to-assume estimation, garbage -- but good garbage
out of which there is still some chance of developing a nice little
R6RS.


-t
------

"A classification such as the above might therefore
make it possible for more Schemers to achieve greater
happiness." -- Will Clinger

-----




> Good luck,
> Robby
>
Received on Sun Feb 25 2007 - 22:30:22 UTC