From: Phil Tomson <rubyfan@...>
Date: 2006-07-05T10:06:01+09:00
Subject: Re: ed borasky and his second favourite programming language

On 7/4/06, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@cesmail.net> wrote:
> Phil Tomson wrote:
> > However, having some experience with creating DSLs for describing and
> > simulating quantum circuits [QDL] and for RTL/behavioral level
> > description/simulation [RHDL], Ihave the suspicion that Ruby is
> > flexible enough such that we could create some domain specific
> > languages with it (where the domains can be science and math).   It
> > would be cool to create several little specialized languages in Ruby
> > so that we could have the 'best of both worlds' - good for specialized
> > domains while also being good at solving general propgramming
> > problems.  One can imagine that we could create a specialized language
> > using Ruby that could be every bit as useful as R for statistics, for
> > example.
> Useful, sure ... as fast as, as well supported by "professional
> statisticians" ... that I rather doubt. Languages -- both human and
> programming -- co-evolve within a community of creators and users. R
> co-evolved in a community of statisticians with a highly numerical
> approach. Maxima co-evolved in a community of scientists with lots of
> symbolic math to do, mostly having to do with the physics of nuclear
> energy. It's pretty clear to me that Rails co-evolved in a community of
> web application designers and users, but I'm not sure about Ruby -- I'm
> a latecomer to Ruby.
>
>
> >
> > Also, one can imagine that we could perhaps create something very new
> > given Ruby's strengths right now (Rails and web programming in
> > general): The web-enabled research paper.  When I was working on my
> > master's thesis I kept thinking that it would be great if I could not
> > only read the reference papers, but also access their experimental
> > data seamlessly.  And perhaps not only the data , but also the
> > programs used to generate that data.  What if graphs in a web-enabled
> > research paper were not just graphs, but you could also 'push-into'
> > them and access the underlying data?  It would make it easy to then
> > compare data from other research in your own paper.  crazy idea?
> > Couldn't a mashup of web programming and sci-research-languages lead
> > to a new level of collaboration?
> Could ... and ... (pregnant pause) has. Donald Knuth calls this
> "literate programming."

I've heard of literate programming and I'm not quite sure if that's
what I'm thinking about... it might be part of the picture, but not
the whole.

> In the Python universe, it's well supported by
> Ed Ream's "Leo" editor
> (http://webpages.charter.net/edreamleo/front.html). R has literate
> programming "built in" using something called "SWeave". See
>
> http://www.bepress.com/bioconductor/paper2

This second link seems to be closer to what I'm thinking.

Ed: do you happen to live in the Portland Oregon area?  I'm guessing
you do based on your choice of beers and the radio station listed on
your home page.  If so there's a PDX.rb meeting coming up at FreeGeek
this Thursday evening at 7PM.

Phil