Re: PowerLoom programming in STELLA

Cameron,

as far as documentation goes, the STELLA manual - incomplete as it is
- is all there is (plus whatever else you can find on the STELLA Web
page).  There is lots of source code, of course, and I'd be happy to
answer any questions you might have.  

The STELLA development community is very small.  There are a few
people here at ISI, and outside, as far as I can tell, there are maybe
around 10 or so brave souls that still write STELLA code or have done
so at some point or other (which is part of the reason why there
hasn't been much motivation for us to improve the manual - a chicken
and egg problem, of course).

It is possible to develop STELLA directly from Java, but it is
certainly not very convenient.  You'd write your STELLA system(s),
call the STELLA to Java translator via the command-line interface,
e.g.,

       % ./stella -e '(make-system "hello-world" :java)'

(as described in the manual), and then Java-compile and run the
result.  I assume one could write an Emacs mode or Eclipse plugin that
would support this a bit better, but since we are all developing on
top of Lisp, none of this support exists.

The main reason for developing STELLA was to keep the convenience of
Lisp programming and development (such as incremental compilation,
class redefinition without exiting your program state, changing
definitions during debugging, etc.) while allowing delivery in and easy
integration with more mainstream languages.  So, it is still a very
Lisp-centric environment.  Had we embarked on this a few years later,
we probably would have done everything in Java.

Hans

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>>>>> Cameron Ross <[email protected]> writes:

> Hello,
> I would like to learn how to learn to develop for PowerLoom using the STELLA programming language.  I have the STELLA manual, but are there any other references out there that I could consider?  How large is the STELLA development community?  Is anyone programming STELLA-based systems from within a Java development environment?  Is this even possible?

> Thanks much,
> Cameron