From: Lachlan Pitts Date: 2001-11-20T10:28:20+09:00 Subject: [ruby-talk:25872] Human Oriented Programming & Intentional Programming Hi Rubyers, Just a thought (and not a particularly well examined one) from an amateur. With Ruby's blurring of the lines between compilation and execution, I am wondering whether this scripting language (which is SO cool), its extensions like RubyInRuby, MetaRuby, AspectR and Behaviours and the much discussed cross-platform windowing library (maybe JRuby and the Eclipse windowing libraries is another combination) could at least _bootstrap_ an open-source Intentional Programming system (a la Microsoft Research). An examination of which is available in : "Generative Programming: Methods, Tools, and Applications" by Krzysztof Czarnecki, Ulrich Eisenecker 864 pages 1 edition (June 6, 2000) Addison-Wesley Pub Co; ISBN: 0201309777 and various places around the Net. From what I understand the thought is to move programming languages to being compositions of intention declarations (sort of like an active adorned Abstract Syntax Tree on steroids) allowing new abstractions to become part of the programming system. "Active source" almost :) Each intention can have sub intentions that specialize its edition (+ version control), display, printing, evaluation (whether edition time or no) and even code generation. Domain Specific Languages can then be constructed and shared in a fairly processor agnostic yet efficient manner. Anyway, its just a vapourware thought hoping to _stimulate discussion_. Back to having fun with Ruby :) PS: Another fun thing to think about it is the extension to Subject Oriented Programming from IBM - http://www.research.ibm.com/hyperspace/ in Ruby (runtime composition of concern spaces) - that would be very cool too :) (Although both thoughts do turn my brain into knots :). Lachlan Pitts