New language design book

["Henning von Rosen" <address@hidden>]

Anyone read this book?

"A Concise Introduction to Computer Language: Design, Experimentation, and Paradigms" by Daniel Cooke, Texas Tech 

http://newtexts.com/newtexts/book.cfm?book_id=750


Regards,
Henning
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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James McCartney" <asynth@io.com>
To: <ll1-discuss@ai.mit.edu>
Sent: Friday, July 04, 2003 1:49 AM
Subject: a pure side effect language


> 
> I don't know if anyone here knows about the MAX application, which is 
> used by musicians (there are other ports known as jMAX and PD). It is a 
> boxes and wires style visual language where the boxes are objects and 
> the wires represent message sends to the objects. The message sends are 
> implemented as C function calls passing a list of tagged argument 
> values.
> 
> The interesting thing about this language is that is probably as far 
> from functional as you can get. It is a pure side effect language. The 
> function calls do not return a value. Therefore it can only do anything 
> by mutating an object or causing i/o. There are no variables per se, 
> but there are objects in which you can store a value by sending it a 
> message, and get the stored value out by sending a message.
> 
> The diagrams (called "patches") in MAX quickly become hard to decipher, 
> but the box and wires paradigm is very fast for new users to pick up. 
> Though IMO there is a low ceiling for what you can write directly "in 
> the language". Most power users eventually write their own C plug-in 
> objects for it to do something complex.
> 
> This language has thousands of users.
> 
> -- 
> --- james mccartney