[MSLUG] Reboot

Hendrik Boom hendrik at topoi.pooq.com
Thu Oct 20 15:31:03 EDT 2011


On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 10:02:13AM -0400, Marc Feeley wrote:
> Dear MSLUGers, we haven't had a meeting in a long time and I am hoping we can start having regular meetings again, say once every 2 months.
> 
> - Please reply to this message if you are interested in having a meeting in November (I propose Thursday November 10 at 7 PM, but if you would prefer another date then please make suggestions)

I'd prefer *not* to have it on Tuesday or Thursday evenings, because 
that conflicts with French classes.   But I can skip a French class now 
and then if necessary.

> 
> - We need speakers!  If you are working with Scheme/Lisp or related language (e.g. JavaScript), then please consider giving a presentation.  Don't be shy...  we all have a story to tell.  If no one comes forward, then I can prepare a talk on the Gambit REPL app for iPhone.  I can also ask my students to present some of the work we are doing on the compilation of JavaScript.

I have no idea if this is of interest:

I threw together a strongly-typed, garbage-collected concatenative (is 
that what they call it now (i.e., stack-based like Forth)?) language a 
while ago.  It's not a clean implementation; it's not a usable language; 
it was just a miniproject to prove it could be done.  Interesting 
features are 
  -- joint unions instead of disjoint unions in the type system
  -- the garbage collector garbage-collects its own code.  Of course, it 
wouldn't delete itself because if it's executing, it's obviously still 
accessible, but otherwise it treats its own code no differently from 
anything else.
  -- It was intended to be somewhat self-hosting, but it isn't there 
yet, and will probably never be.  At most, I may use the ideas in 
another system someday, perhaps in a low-level JIT code-generation 
tool for other languages.

I could talk about it on my back porch over beers at a moment's notice, 
but a formal talk is another thing   I haven't given one in ages, and 
I'm out of touch with current presentation technology.  I'd prefer not 
to prepare a talk for November, the month of nanowrimo, (but I suppose I 
could, with some technical coaching and a dress rehearsal -- but that's 
possibly better done before or after a previous meeting).

-- hendrik

> 
> - You can also propose to me other people who you think might give an interesting presentation.  I'll do the arm twisting!
> 
> Marc
> 
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