March 2012 - Pharo-dev - lists.pharo.org

Re: [Pharo-project] [ANN] A Unifying Mechanism for the Implementation of Concurrency Abstractions

by Igor Stasenko

btw, Stefan i can help mentoring the projects you proposed for GSoC -- Best regards, Igor Stasenko.

March 10, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] Enjoyed the reading..

by Igor Stasenko

On 10 March 2012 17:41, Jimmie Houchin <jlhouchin(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On 3/10/2012 10:29 AM, Jimmie Houchin wrote: > [snip] > >> And I believe in Pharo's case, that approachability >> is an area that will is greatly as the appearance, browsers and editors >> are getting improved and polished. > > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > And I believe in Pharo's case, that approachability is an area that is being > greatly improved as the appearance, browsers and editors are getting > improved and polished. > > Ugh! Changed thoughts mid-sentence and forgot to correct. > I hate seeing that in my emails. Apologies. > No need for apologies :) Don't feel yourself as an invited guest. Feel yourself at home. > Jimmie > > -- Best regards, Igor Stasenko.

March 10, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] Enjoyed the reading..

by Jimmie Houchin

On 3/10/2012 10:29 AM, Jimmie Houchin wrote: [snip] > And I believe in Pharo's case, that approachability > is an area that will is greatly as the appearance, browsers and editors > are getting improved and polished. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ And I believe in Pharo's case, that approachability is an area that is being greatly improved as the appearance, browsers and editors are getting improved and polished. Ugh! Changed thoughts mid-sentence and forgot to correct. I hate seeing that in my emails. Apologies. Jimmie

March 10, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] Enjoyed the reading..

by Jimmie Houchin

On 3/9/2012 5:02 PM, Igor Stasenko wrote: > According to this guy, we're using 3rd most powful programming > language (or, well one of 4.. to not insult anyone ;). > > http://www.paulgraham.com/icad.html > > So, we're not that bad, eh? :) I think were pretty good. :) I personally don't think anything comes close to Smalltalk when it comes to approachability and power. Smalltalk brings power to people who aren't necessarily "hackers". I am not a professional programmer. My day job requires very little computer. But, I have a vision for things outside of my day job. Smalltalk empowers me better than anything else I've seen. If you take someone who doesn't have their very soul invested in Emacs, git, C/C++/Java/Python/languageOfChoice, and other tool sets. Or if they are simply willing to come to Smalltalk on its terms and when in Smalltalk do Smalltalk. Then you are offered great power with very approachable tools. And I believe in Pharo's case, that approachability is an area that will is greatly as the appearance, browsers and editors are getting improved and polished. There is much in the image I don't understand. That's okay. It doesn't stop me from doing what I want to do. Most people who find Smalltalk unapproachable, seem to want to bring a lot of baggage with them. They don't want to start fresh. This can be a problem for them. They need to let go, start fresh, learn what is here. Then evaluate how they can apply Smalltalk in their set of tools. And personally that is really how any language and tool set should be evaluated, though that is rarely the case. I don't believe it is to our advantage to lose our soul to try to make Pharo into the image the other tools that are already available. Why have a Smalltalk flavored Python? Let Pharo be Pharo. I think the more we can empower the person who can come to Pharo afresh, newbie or old pro, regardless of experience. The more we empower them to create their future. The better the future for Pharo. Pharo, power to create! Pharo, empowering you to create! Pharo, empowering you to create the future! Jimmie

March 10, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] [ANN] A Unifying Mechanism for the Implementation of Concurrency Abstractions

by Stefan Marr

Hi Nick: On 09 Mar 2012, at 16:26, Nick Ager wrote: > I'm really looking forward to digesting this. I'm been flirting with Clojure and have been enviously looking at their STM, so this sounds really interesting and potentially very timely for Pharo and Smalltalk. For you, there might still be the stumbling block performance. My direct port of Lukas' STM [1] performs a bit better than the port of it on top of my abstractions. However, comparing to Clojure is not entirely fair, since Clojure only tracks explicit 'refs'. While we in Smalltalk do not have that concept, and need to track everything. Lukas originally did benchmarks also with Pier or Seaside or so, don't remember precisely. You might find something in [2]. Helvetia [3] includes also a port of the STM, so you might be able to get your hands on some benchmarks to see whether it is fast enough for you. Would be interested to hear whether it is fast enough in practice. Best regards Stefan [1] http://ss3.gemstone.com/ss/LRSTM.html [2] http://source.lukas-renggli.ch/transactional.html [3] http://scg.unibe.ch/research/helvetia -- Stefan Marr Software Languages Lab Vrije Universiteit Brussel Pleinlaan 2 / B-1050 Brussels / Belgium http://soft.vub.ac.be/~smarr Phone: +32 2 629 2974 Fax: +32 2 629 3525

March 10, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] All Pharo Kernel jobs working

by Camillo Bruni

cool! On 2012-03-09, at 21:21, Pavel Krivanek wrote: > Hi, > > I created an ad-hoc fix of Pharo Kernel Tests job, pushed small fix of > Pharo Kernel Seaside and re-enabled Pharo Kernel Report. So all the > Pharo Kernel Jenkins jobs are in working order. > > https://ci.lille.inria.fr/pharo/view/Pharo-Kernel/ > > Cheers, > -- Pavel >

March 10, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] Enjoyed the reading..

by Ben Coman

Off topic... but the following article by Paul Graham has been one of my all time favorites for the last few years... http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html Eliot Miranda wrote: > On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 3:02 PM, Igor Stasenko <siguctua(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > >> According to this guy, we're using 3rd most powful programming >> language (or, well one of 4.. to not insult anyone ;). >> >> http://www.paulgraham.com/icad.html >> >> So, we're not that bad, eh? :) >> >> > > I like what he says about patterns: > > "If you try to solve a hard problem, the question is not whether you will > use a powerful enough language, but whether you will (a) use a powerful > language, (b) write a de facto interpreter for one, or (c) yourself become > a human compiler for one. We see this already begining to happen in the > Python example, where we are in effect simulating the code that a compiler > would generate to implement a lexical variable. > > This practice is not only common, but institutionalized. For example, in > the OO world you hear a good deal about "patterns". I wonder if these > patterns are not sometimes evidence of case (c), the human compiler, at > work. When I see patterns in my programs, I consider it a sign of trouble. > The shape of a program should reflect only the problem it needs to solve. > Any other regularity in the code is a sign, to me at least, that I'm using > abstractions that aren't powerful enough-- often that I'm generating by > hand the expansions of some macro that I need to write." > > > >> A very good explanation to 'pointy-haired' why 'mainstream' language >> are not best choice.. >> as well as good illustration that in order to compete and stay >> popular, all mainstream languages >> will slowly converge to lisp. >> >> -- >> Best regards, >> Igor Stasenko. >> >> >> > > >

March 10, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] Enjoyed the reading..

by laurent laffont

On Sat, Mar 10, 2012 at 12:02 AM, Igor Stasenko <siguctua(a)gmail.com> wrote: > According to this guy, we're using 3rd most powful programming > language (or, well one of 4.. to not insult anyone ;). > > http://www.paulgraham.com/icad.html > > So, we're not that bad, eh? :) > A real scientific analysis ;) proves that Smalltalk is far more powerful than Lisp (but sadly less powerful than Haskell) : http://magaloma.blogspot.com/2010/11/revenge-of-smalltalk.html Laurent > > A very good explanation to 'pointy-haired' why 'mainstream' language > are not best choice.. > as well as good illustration that in order to compete and stay > popular, all mainstream languages > will slowly converge to lisp. > > -- > Best regards, > Igor Stasenko. > >

March 10, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] [squeak-dev] GSoC application submitted, 22 ideas collected

by Lawson English

There's a bunch of different ways that R interfaces/bindings can go, apparently. From what I can see, most straightforward way to interface with R would be to create a WorkSpace that can send WorkSpace input to an R interpreter and echo the output back to the workspace. You want something more than that, I assume. There's at least two Ruby interfaces to R that I could find. There's at least one Python interface. My cursory reading from a few months ago didn't make clear the difference between the library bindings, the interfaces and the GUIs, so there's probably a lot of overlap. Lawson On 3/9/12 7:29 PM, HernÃ¡n Morales Durand wrote: > Hi Lawson, I know from an experienced Java programmer, trying to make > a binding to R, which is difficult to deal with particularities of > connecting with R efficently (I could ask him for details if a student > is interested in the project). I think R isn't comparable to what > iGraph could provide, every day more studies results are presented in > R and they are not necessarily described in network format. A > front-end to R could be another interesting project idea though. > Cheers, > > HernÃ¡n > > > 2012/3/9 Lawson English <lenglish5(a)cox.net <mailto:lenglish5@cox.net>> > > A binding to R would be relatively trivial, I think. A binding to > iGraph would be a bit more challenging and would allow for things > like using Connectors to directly create/define iGraph data > structures and use iGraph's API to modify their behavior. > > Lawson > > > On 3/9/12 6:07 PM, HernÃ¡n Morales Durand wrote: >> Name: A binding to R >> Level: Advanced >> Possible mentor: ? >> Possible second mentor: ? >> >> Description >> >> With the increased popularity of high-level statistical >> programming language and environments for data analysis like R, a >> way to interface this package is becoming a must have for >> Smalltalk, since it implements complex and unrivalled statistical >> techniques for data manipulation and presentation, like Analysis >> of Variance, Covariance, Time Series, Generalized Linear Models, >> Additive Models, Non-linear Regressions, Tree Models, >> Multivariate Statistics, etc. besides the many mathematical >> functions, which are used in fields from economics to medicine >> and engineering. It is estimated that R posseses about 2 million >> of users worldwide and more than 2000 add-ons and increasing >> everyday through repositories like CRAN and Crantastic.org >> >> Technical Details >> >> The student should know or be motivated to learn statistics with >> the R environment and language, and its fundamental workflow: >> importing and preparing the data, and finally running the >> analysis, and presenting the results. Dealing with R sessions and >> presentation of results (like vectors and plots) will be >> challenging too. >> >> Benefits to the Student >> >> The student will gain invaluable experience from two >> complementary environments, and his experience with the interface >> technology choosed will be useful for the many projects where >> Smalltalk needs help from external systems. >> >> Benefits to the Community >> >> The goal of this project is to build a wrapper to interface R, an >> open source statistical programming language, providing a whole >> range of missing functionality to Smalltalk. This binding could >> complement the R environment where a general programming >> environment is needed, attracting many statisticians, and will >> open Smalltalk to domain-specific areas as diverse as Clinical >> Trials, Finance and Machine Learning. >> >> 2012/3/9 Janko MivÅ¡ek <janko.mivsek(a)eranova.si >> <mailto:janko.mivsek@eranova.si>> >> >> Dear Smalltalkers, >> >> We just submitted the application to this year GSoC, now let >> we wait >> with fingers crossed for Google until next Friday to decide. >> I think we >> have quite some chance, specially because we collected and >> very well >> described 22 project ideas: >> >> http://gsoc2012.esug.org/ideas >> >> There is still a time for ideas, so if someone has still half >> finished >> one, please finish and publish it. Also authors of ideas >> please check if >> your idea is put correctly on above page. >> >> Best regards >> Janko and Carla >> >> -- >> Carla F. Griggio, Janko MivÅ¡ek >> Smalltalk GSoC Admin Team >> http://gsoc2012.esug.org >> >> >> >> >> -- >> HernÃ¡n Morales >> Information Technology Manager, >> Institute of Veterinary Genetics. >> National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET). >> La Plata (1900), Buenos Aires, Argentina. >> Telephone: +54 (0221) 421-1799. >> Internal: 422 >> Fax: 425-7980 or 421-1799. >> >

March 10, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] [squeak-dev] GSoC application submitted, 22 ideas collected

by HernÃ¡n Morales Durand

Name: CSS Template System Level: Easy / Intermediate Possible mentor: HernÃ¡n Morales Durand Possible second mentor: ? Description Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a technology which allows personalized presentation styles of document contents. It is based in textual source code which has influence on the visual style and presentation of HTML and XML documents. This includes ways of assigning layout and style properties, such as font types and sizes, for different types of document components when they are presented. As having a long adoption rate from specification (CSS 1 : 1996, CSS 2 : 1998) to be fully supported by web browsers (2000 & 2006 for CSS2) it is predictable that CSS 3 modules like Backgrounds and Colors, Media Queries, and Multi-column Layout will come in no short time from now (2012), although many web sites today use CSS heavily. Through the years, the need for high-level presentation objects like grids and common layouts, leaded to the creation of CSS libraries called frameworks ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS_frameworks) to help web programmers in composing more attractive web sites in a rapid way. Technical Details The objective is to complete an initial CSS framework in Smalltalk (Phantasia http://www.squeaksource.com/Phantasia) with CSS Template objects. Phantasia avoids to learn CSS syntax, and with proper completion could obtain a rich object model of CSS objects beyond the specification limits, suitable to edition through Smalltalk code. High-level template objects could include navigational ones like lists, menus, or palettes, useful in wizards. Presentational objects like template layouts, which are already implemented by external CSS libraries like Blueprint, and scale to whole CSS templates including reports, galleries, etc. The model should be independent of web framework so it could be re-used in Seaside, Aida, Iliad or other future web frameworks. Benefits to the Student The student will learn how to build and extend a model for a limited textual technology (CSS), from the low level objects like CSS functions to high level objects like Positioners. The student could apply the results of his work to several popular Smalltalk web frameworks. Benefits to the Community The Smalltalk community working with web technologies will be tremendously favoured by having ready-made CSS objects to incorporate easily in their web applications. 2012/3/9 Janko MivÅ¡ek <janko.mivsek(a)eranova.si> > Dear Smalltalkers, > > We just submitted the application to this year GSoC, now let we wait > with fingers crossed for Google until next Friday to decide. I think we > have quite some chance, specially because we collected and very well > described 22 project ideas: > > http://gsoc2012.esug.org/ideas > > There is still a time for ideas, so if someone has still half finished > one, please finish and publish it. Also authors of ideas please check if > your idea is put correctly on above page. > > Best regards > Janko and Carla > > -- > Carla F. Griggio, Janko MivÅ¡ek > Smalltalk GSoC Admin Team > http://gsoc2012.esug.org > >

March 10, 2012