Oliver, The short answer is no. The longer answer is
- i worked this all out on my own; so, you guys -- who can program lift on top of scala on top of JVM and are therefore about 20X smarter than i am -- can too. - And also, help is always available, if there is something specific you don't understand, let me know and i will do my best to convey it to you. Best wishes, --greg P.S. Here is a version of the paragraph with links to useful bits of lore from the literature. For myself, i was unhappy with the notion of name. The π-calculi<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi-calculus>and lambda calculi <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus> suffer a dependence on a notion of name. Both families of calculi require at least countably infinitely <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countable> many names<http://www.cs.nps.navy.mil/research/languages/statements/gordon.html>, and a notion of equality on names. If names have no internal structure then these theories *cannot be effective<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_function> *. The reasons is that the notion of equality must then be realized as an infinitary table which cannot fit in any computer we have access to. Therefore, in effective theories, names must have internal structure. Since they have internal structure and are at least countably infinite, one is in danger of undermining the foundational character of these proposals for computing. Therefore, the only possible solution is that the notion of structured name must come from the notion of program proposed by the model. This argument is airtight. If you want a foundational model of computing with nominal structure, the nominal structure must derive from the notion of computation being put forward, i.e. it must *reflect* the notion of computation<http://svn.biosimilarity.com/src/open/papers/trunk/concurrency/rho/ex_nihilo_entcs/ex_nihilo_finco.pdf>. This gives rise to all kinds of new an beautiful phenomena. One measure of your way into compositional thinking is whether this is happening. Is your approach to compositional thinking beginning to yield whole new aspects of computing, and new 'wholes' of computation, new forms of organization. 2009/6/16 Oliver Lambert <olambo...@gmail.com> > > > 2009/6/17 Meredith Gregory <lgreg.mered...@gmail.com> > > Jeremy, >> >> Most excellent question award to you, sir! >> >> How to bootstrap thinking compositionally... this is what i did >> >> - learn some compositional idioms by heart >> - do you know the shape of the paradoxical combinator by heart >> - do you know the data making up a monad >> - do you know the data making up a distributive law between monads >> - use them in real world applications and see where they fail >> - when is calculating the least/greatest fixpoint of a recursive >> spec for a problem the suboptimal solution >> - when is a monad not the answer >> - when is an indexed form of composition inadequate >> - improve them >> - is it a situational improvement or >> - a fundamental improvement >> - see where the very programming model itself fails >> - is functional composition the only sort of composition >> - how is parallel composition like functional composition >> - is parallel composition easily represented in categorical >> composition >> - improve it >> - what is the view of the world in your notion of composition >> - play with new programming models >> - does your new notion of composition give rise to a whole >> generation of different models >> - invent new idioms in these models >> - what are the things these models naturally express >> - and teach them to someone who wishes to bootstrap thinking >> compositionally >> >> For myself, i was unhappy with the notion of name. The π-calculi and >> lambda calculi suffer a dependence on a notion of name. Both families of >> calculi require at least countably infinitely many names, and a notion of >> equality on names. If names have no internal structure then these theories >> *cannot be effective*. > > > Do we need to do some sort of course to understand this language? > > >> The reasons is that the notion of equality must then be realized as an >> infinitary table which cannot fit in any computer we have access to. >> Therefore, in effective theories, names must have internal structure. Since >> they have internal structure and are at least countably infinite, one is in >> danger of undermining the foundational character of these proposals for >> computing. Therefore, the only possible solution is that the notion of >> structured name must come from the notion of program proposed by the model. >> This argument is airtight. If you want a foundational model of computing >> with nominal structure, the nominal structure must derive from the notion of >> computation being put forward, i.e. it must *reflect* the notion of >> computation. This gives rise to all kinds of new an beautiful phenomena. One >> measure of your way into compositional thinking is whether this is >> happening. Is your approach to compositional thinking beginning to yield >> whole new aspects of computing, and new 'wholes' of computation, new forms >> of organization. >> >> Best wishes, >> >> --greg >> >> On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 7:31 PM, Jeremy Day <jeremy....@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> Greg, >>> >>> On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 6:38 PM, Meredith Gregory < >>> lgreg.mered...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>>> It takes some serious training to think compositionally. >>> >>> >>> No doubt it is extremely tough to think compositionally, and it's all too >>> easy to fall back on non-compositional ways of thinking. In a similar vein >>> it's all too easy to fall into procedural patterns when learning or working >>> with functional programming in a multi-paradigm language. But what are good >>> ways for programmers to learn to think compositionally and, more >>> importantly, practice? Do you know of any books or online references that >>> might help make the transition for anyone who is interested? >>> >>> Jeremy >>> >>> >>> >> >> >> -- >> L.G. Meredith >> Managing Partner >> Biosimilarity LLC >> 1219 NW 83rd St >> Seattle, WA 98117 >> >> +1 206.650.3740 >> >> http://biosimilarity.blogspot.com >> >> >> > > > > -- L.G. Meredith Managing Partner Biosimilarity LLC 1219 NW 83rd St Seattle, WA 98117 +1 206.650.3740 http://biosimilarity.blogspot.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Lift" group. 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