La politique extérieure de M. Wilson

Ennals David. La politique extérieure de M. Wilson. In: Politique étrangère, n°4 - 1964 - 29ᵉannée. pp. 370-379

Multi-language synchronization

Abstract. We propose multi-language synchronization, a novel approach to the problem of migrating code from a legacy language (such as C) to a new language. We maintain two parallel versions of every source file, one in the legacy language, and one in the new language. Both of these files are fully editable, and the two files are kept automatically in sync so that they have the same semantic meaning and, where possible, have the same comments and layout. We propose non-deterministic language translation as a means to implement multi-language synchronization. If a file is modified in language A, we produce a new version in language B by translating the file into a non-deterministic description of many ways that it could be encoded in language B and then choosing the version that is closest to the old file in language B. To demonstrate the feasibility of this approach, we have implemented a translator that can synchronize files written in a straw-man language, Jekyll, with files written in C. Jekyll is a high level functional programming language that has many of the features found in modern programming languages.

User-Friendly Functional Programming for Web Mashups

MashMaker is a web-based tool that makes it easy for normal users to create mashups from live data on the internet. Users can query, combine, and explore data, using an interface inspired by spreadsheets and web browsers. Like a spreadsheet, MashMaker mixes program and data and allows ad-hoc unstructured editing of programs. Like a web browser, MashMaker allows users to find the information they are interested in by browsing, rather than writing code, and allows users to bookmark interesting things they find, forming new widgets — reusable mashup fragments. MashMaker is also a modern functional programming language with non-side effecting expressions, higher order functions, and lazy evaluation. We argue that a functional language provides an excellent model to allow users to easily create mashups from web data. In order to cope with this unusual domain, MashMaker contains a number of deviations from normal functional programming languages. Data is live, programs are mixed with data, map and fold operations are described using direct manipulation of data, data is structured like a file-system, and it is possible to write a program largely by browsing around, without having to type or decide in advance what one wants to do