Re: [stack] Advantages of cat, joy ..?

On Feb 16, 2009, at 12:21 PM, William Tanksley wrote:

> For example, applicative languages make it easy to implement a very
> limited amount of parallel control flow: the parameters of a function
> are evaluated independently, so in theory they could be evaluated in
> parallel. One possible solution is to invent control structures that  
> are
> explicitly parallel; indeed, this has been done for at least one very
> interesting language, Factor.

Representing stack-based code in a graphical manner exposes  
essentially all of the parallelism you'd get in an applicative  
language. There are areas where applicatively languages are better  
(primarily implementing existing algorithms and math equations), but I  
don't think parallelism is one of them. Well, at least not in any way  
that matters; if you're talking about implicit parallelism, your  
compiler is going to be figuring it out for you anyway.

Talking about "human factors", I really think an interface that would  
draw out your data flow in real-time as you coded (which is trivial to  
do in a flat language), complete with type labels, etc, would make a  
huge difference. You'd name the inputs and outputs to your function as  
you do in Forth/Factor, but you could think about these labels as  
names for "ports". The diagram would represent a push-based, strictly- 
downward dataflow program. As soon as I get the time, I'll try and put  
something together; I have the unfortunate obligation of working to  
feed myself lately. The idea would be to make concatenative  
programming accessible to artists and incorporate some functional  
reactive programming ideas.

- John