'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Marc A. Criley]

So now scientists at Cornell have come up with a "a new computer
language designed to avoid unforeseen programming errors".

How?  "The Cyclone compiler identifies segments of code that could
eventually cause such problems using a 'type-checking engine'.  This
does not just look for specific strings of code, but analyses the code's
purpose and singles out conflicts known to be potentially dangerous."

The article is at
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991578.

I'm sure this is not just "C with constraint checking", but still, Ada's
"type-checking engine" has been getting exercised, optimized, and
verified for almost 20 years now.

You just shake your head sometimes...

Marc A. Criley
Senior Staff Engineer
Quadrus Corporation
www.quadruscorp.com

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Peter Amey]

"Marc A. Criley" wrote:
> 
> So now scientists at Cornell have come up with a "a new computer
> language designed to avoid unforeseen programming errors".
> 
> How?  "The Cyclone compiler identifies segments of code that could
> eventually cause such problems using a 'type-checking engine'.  This
> does not just look for specific strings of code, but analyses the code's
> purpose and singles out conflicts known to be potentially dangerous."
> 
> The article is at
> http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991578.
> 
> I'm sure this is not just "C with constraint checking", but still, Ada's
> "type-checking engine" has been getting exercised, optimized, and
> verified for almost 20 years now.
> 

We did feel obliged to contact New Scientist and tell them about Ada and
SPARK.  They seemed interested but we will have to wait and see if
anything comes of it.

Peter

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Marin David Condic]

In CS we seem to often see people rediscovering something and declaring it a
major breakthrough. Maybe they add a few new twists, but its still
fundamentally the same as something else. Witness Java thinking it invented
a virtual machine. How old is p-code? And I remember doing essentially that
back in college before p-code was invented.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Marc A. Criley" <mcqada@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:3BFA4095.8325D016@earthlink.net...
> So now scientists at Cornell have come up with a "a new computer
> language designed to avoid unforeseen programming errors".
>
> How?  "The Cyclone compiler identifies segments of code that could
> eventually cause such problems using a 'type-checking engine'.  This
> does not just look for specific strings of code, but analyses the code's
> purpose and singles out conflicts known to be potentially dangerous."

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Florian Weimer]

"Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org> writes:

> In CS we seem to often see people rediscovering something and declaring it a
> major breakthrough. Maybe they add a few new twists, but its still
> fundamentally the same as something else. Witness Java thinking it invented
> a virtual machine. How old is p-code?

Gosling himself probably used p-code in Gosling Emacs ...

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Marin David Condic]

There are occasionally true innovations. The GUI interface was once an
innovation over the Glass Teletype and its descendents (and certainly there
is debate over who was first to have one) but was the Windows GUI or the Mac
GUI somehow something fundamentally new and innovative once PARC had started
it off? If you listen to the marketing weenies, you'd believe that Windows
was something never before seen on this planet. You'd also believe that Bill
Gates invented the Operating System, Dr. Evil invented the "Death Star" and
Al Gore invented the Internet.

I think Computer Science would be better off without the hype. Let's be
honest and say "I started with concept X and evolved it to include these new
and interesting capabilities" rather than "I invented Concept X in a
blinding fit of brilliance and the world will never be the same!"

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Florian Weimer" <Florian.Weimer@RUS.Uni-Stuttgart.DE> wrote in message
news:tgr8qtpig0.fsf@mercury.rus.uni-stuttgart.de...
>
> Gosling himself probably used p-code in Gosling Emacs ...

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[chris.danx]

"Marc A. Criley" <mcqada@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:3BFA4095.8325D016@earthlink.net...
> So now scientists at Cornell have come up with a "a new computer
> language designed to avoid unforeseen programming errors".
>
> How?  "The Cyclone compiler identifies segments of code that could
> eventually cause such problems using a 'type-checking engine'.  This
> does not just look for specific strings of code, but analyses the code's
> purpose and singles out conflicts known to be potentially dangerous."
>
> The article is at
> http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991578.
>
> I'm sure this is not just "C with constraint checking", but still, Ada's
> "type-checking engine" has been getting exercised, optimized, and
> verified for almost 20 years now.
>
> You just shake your head sometimes...

Hmm, I'm getting fed up with posts like this.  The frequency of posts like
this has increased alot in recent months, and I'm sick of it.

I'm giving this group until I'm sufficiently well versed in
Haskell/Clean/Dylan (so many choices), then if it's still full of "my
language is better than yours" posts, I'm off (I had planned to write
substantial software in Ada (it's familiar), now I've resigned much of it to
the be done in something else.  The point?  ppl here could use it (in
particular an OS) as advocacy but that's exactly what's tickin' me off!
It's got to the 'crusade' stages, which is a shame; Ada is a nice language,
and good to program in (I'm not going to stop programming in Ada) but it's
not fun or fair to take swipes at other ppl's languages (and hard work) just
because they don't program in it.)

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Wes Groleau]

Marin David Condic wrote:
> I think Computer Science would be better off without the hype. Let's be
> honest and say "I started with concept X and evolved it to include these new
> and interesting capabilities" rather than "I invented Concept X in a
> blinding fit of brilliance and the world will never be the same!"

But if people stop saying that, the world will never be the same.  :-)

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Wes Groleau]

"chris.danx" wrote:
> I'm giving this group until I'm sufficiently well versed in
> Haskell/Clean/Dylan (so many choices), then if it's still full of "my
> language is better than yours" posts, I'm off (I had planned to write

It's true that some Ada fans take this to an extreme, but:

1. Perhaps that's because the irrationality of the Ada bashing
   majority is so extreme.

2. The particular post you complained about was not an
   "Ada is better" post.  It was expressing disbelief
   that someone is touting improvements on C as something
   special when they have been proven in Ada and other
   languages for over 20 years.

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Brian Rogoff]

On Tue, 20 Nov 2001, Marc A. Criley wrote:
> So now scientists at Cornell have come up with a "a new computer
> language designed to avoid unforeseen programming errors".

Nope, they've been working on it for a while now. In fact, I even posted a 
pointer to the Cyclone reference manual a few months ago (check on Google 
if you don't believe me) since I found out about it on comp.lang.functional
where one of the researchers was discussing it. 

I suppose you could argue that some wheels are being reinvented, but they
aren't the ones you think. Cyclone is more a marriage of ML/Haskell typing
to a C substrate than anything having to do with Ada. Why don't you try 
learning something rather than just posting idiocies? I know, its a lot
easier in comp.lang.ada to get everyone to applaud your wit by supporting
their delusions, but the easy path is not always the most rewarding one. 

> The article is at
> http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991578.

I could post a pointer to Eric Raymund's descriprion of Ada, and that's 
about as useful. Here, educate yourself

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Projects/cyclone/

> I'm sure this is not just "C with constraint checking", but still, Ada's
> "type-checking engine" has been getting exercised, optimized, and
> verified for almost 20 years now.

As I suspected, you don't know anything, but you just had to comment. FYI, 
the first papers on Hindley Milner typing are from the 60s (Hindley, but
its just math) and late 70s (Milner, for a computer application). And the
properties of the type system are described formally, unlike Ada.

> You just shake your head sometimes...

Indeed!

-- Brian

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Pascal Obry]

Chris,

I'm not ok with language war too. But in this case I think that was not the
way it was presented. Just that too many "scientist" write things like "Well
here is a very new tool/lib/whatever..." and when you really look at this
nothing is new. It is nice to come up with something different or something
copied from another technologie but in that case a scientist MUST at least
do some referencing. Reading the article it just looks like they have
all worked out from scratch !

Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|         http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.obry
--|
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Gautier Write-only-address]

>From: "chris.danx" <chris.danx@ntlworld.com>

>Hmm, I'm getting fed up with posts like this.
>The frequency of posts like this has increased alot in recent
>months, and I'm sick of it.

You are right about the form - "C bashings" - and maybe that
Cyclone will help to improve things in areas where everything
is already programmed in C, and debug legacy code whose
programmers are maybe already dead (there are already pieces
of C code programmed 30 yers ago).

However the article is interesting in that it tends to
state that the only way to program systems is in C,
so to program safely, you have to "add security" to C.
"The idea is to take good security ideas from higher level
languages and implement them at a lower level", says a Cornell researcher. 
It's their right, since they live
from this project.

But the journalist should take distance and propose to
compare the alternatives
  1. improve C with higher language ideas
  2. use the higher languages

(1. seems to me "un empl�tre sur une jambe de bois" <- french)
It's worth a feedback to New Scientist.
Surely the vast majority of programmers, who don't use C
or its derivates, will find the article fun.
____________________________________________________________
Gautier  --  http://www.mysunrise.ch/users/gdm/index.htm#Ada

NB: Do not answer to sender address, visit the Web site!
    Ne r�pondez pas � l'exp�diteur, visitez le site ouaibe!


_________________________________________________________________
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Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[chris.danx]

"Wes Groleau" <wwgrol@sparc01.ftw.rsc.raytheon.com> wrote in message
news:3BFA8AE3.48AE4F21@sparc01.ftw.rsc.raytheon.com...
>
>
> "chris.danx" wrote:
> > I'm giving this group until I'm sufficiently well versed in
> > Haskell/Clean/Dylan (so many choices), then if it's still full of "my
> > language is better than yours" posts, I'm off (I had planned to write
>
> It's true that some Ada fans take this to an extreme,
> but:
> 1. Perhaps that's because the irrationality of the Ada bashing
>    majority is so extreme.

Are you suggesting a vicious circle?  I can certainly see how that could
arise; someone claiming X is better than Y and X tries to debunk it, and so
on.  There's no use trying to convince someone who's already made up their
mind, is there?  Why try?  It only makes a person more determined and slowly
turn them into a fanatic.


> 2. The particular post you complained about was not an
>    "Ada is better" post.  It was expressing disbelief
>    that someone is touting improvements on C as something
>    special when they have been proven in Ada and other
>    languages for over 20 years.

It was the tone of the post (which I may have taken the wrong way) that
seemed to convey the "mine's a superior language" belief.  I appologise if
that's not Marc's intention.  I make no appologies though, for highlighting
my distaste at the recent "trend".


Chris

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Wes Groleau]

"chris.danx" wrote:
> > 1. Perhaps that's because the irrationality of the Ada bashing
> >    majority is so extreme.
> 
> Are you suggesting a vicious circle?  I can certainly see how that could

I'm suggesting that sometimes people say some REALLY STUPID
things against Ada and/or in favor of some other language.
This causes fans of quality software to be a little more touchy
about such statements, perhaps even misunderstanding them....

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Jeffrey Carter]

"chris.danx" wrote:
> 
> Hmm, I'm getting fed up with posts like this ... "my
> language is better than yours"

That is not the impression I got from this post. Rather, it was, "How
can they claim this is new when Ada has had it since Ada-80?"

It reminds me more of reactions to an article a few years ago (sorry, no
reference right now) on adding concurrency to C++ that was obviously an
implementation of Ada-83 tasking in C++ terms, even using "entry",
"accept", "select", "rendezvous", and so on, but that made no mention or
reference to Ada, instead presenting the ideas as new and original with
the author.

-- 
Jeffrey Carter

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Marin David Condic]

Those of us who have been around Ada and been fans of Ada for a very long
time have gotten very tired of listening to totally irrational criticisms of
the language over the years. We've heard every conceivable lame excuse for
why Ada can't be used for this-or-that application (back in the days of The
Mandate) and heard so much FUD scattered about concerning what an absolutely
horrible abomination Ada is, etc., etc., etc., that we have become a little
touchy. After years of listening to the FUD and lame excuses, we find it
highly ironic when all of a sudden someone working with languages that we
have known had major weaknesses that Ada could have fixed for them
"discovers" that if only they did something more like Ada, their software
would be more reliable and easier to build. (Duh!!!)

I don't think this comes out as a "My language is better than your
language!" war - except insofar as most of us here have known for a long
time that the type-checking, etc., that Ada provides makes for more reliable
code than one typically finds with C. We get to wondering why there's all
this resistance to using Ada but all kinds of enthusiasm for trying to
cobble onto something like C the very features that the C-fans have
criticised Ada for having at all. (IMHO, trying to cobble Ada-ish
techniques/features onto C amounts to polishing a turd, but that's another
story.) The C-fans have spent years trying to get us to understand that
strong typing "only gets in the way" and that Ada sucks because of its type
checking, etc. Now suddenly its a good idea?

I imagine those of us who have fought the same fights for years will
understand and sympathize with the "touchyness" some of us have in this
area. If you have not been through those wars, please be patient with our
ranting and raving. :-)

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Wes Groleau" <wwgrol@sparc01.ftw.rsc.raytheon.com> wrote in message
news:3BFACB1B.DFF32727@sparc01.ftw.rsc.raytheon.com...
>
> I'm suggesting that sometimes people say some REALLY STUPID
> things against Ada and/or in favor of some other language.
> This causes fans of quality software to be a little more touchy
> about such statements, perhaps even misunderstanding them....
>

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Gautier Write-only-address]

>From: "Marin David Condic"

>If you listen to the marketing weenies, you'd believe that Windows
>was something never before seen on this planet.

They are even able to sell Windows XP (2001) with the same arguments
as Windows 3.10 (1992): *now*, you can do multimedia, see pictures,...

>I think Computer Science would be better off without the hype.

      Computer Science
or
      Information Technology
?...

G.


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Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Mike Silva]

Why the extreme overreaction to this posting, which was mostly just
direct quotes from a news article?  What "idiocies" were posted?  If
the inferences the OP drew were incorrect then shouldn't the blame be
placed on a poorly written news article?  If the OP "doesn't know
anything" isn't that also the fault of the news article?  As I said,
your extreme reaction makes no sense on the face of it -- clearly
there's something more behind your comments.

Mike

Brian Rogoff <bpr@bpr.best.vwh.net> wrote in message news:<Pine.BSF.4.10.10111201654460.58194-100000@bpr.best.vwh.net>...
> On Tue, 20 Nov 2001, Marc A. Criley wrote:
> > So now scientists at Cornell have come up with a "a new computer
> > language designed to avoid unforeseen programming errors".
> 
> Nope, they've been working on it for a while now. In fact, I even posted a 
> pointer to the Cyclone reference manual a few months ago (check on Google 
> if you don't believe me) since I found out about it on comp.lang.functional
> where one of the researchers was discussing it. 
> 
> I suppose you could argue that some wheels are being reinvented, but they
> aren't the ones you think. Cyclone is more a marriage of ML/Haskell typing
> to a C substrate than anything having to do with Ada. Why don't you try 
> learning something rather than just posting idiocies? I know, its a lot
> easier in comp.lang.ada to get everyone to applaud your wit by supporting
> their delusions, but the easy path is not always the most rewarding one. 
> 
> > The article is at
> > http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991578.
> 
> I could post a pointer to Eric Raymund's descriprion of Ada, and that's 
> about as useful. Here, educate yourself
> 
> http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Projects/cyclone/
> 
> > I'm sure this is not just "C with constraint checking", but still, Ada's
> > "type-checking engine" has been getting exercised, optimized, and
> > verified for almost 20 years now.
> 
> As I suspected, you don't know anything, but you just had to comment. FYI, 
> the first papers on Hindley Milner typing are from the 60s (Hindley, but
> its just math) and late 70s (Milner, for a computer application). And the
> properties of the type system are described formally, unlike Ada.
> 
> > You just shake your head sometimes...
> 
> Indeed!
> 
> -- Brian

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Ehud Lamm]

chris.danx <chris.danx@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:RsyK7.1377$6W6.439742@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com...
>
> It was the tone of the post (which I may have taken the wrong way) that
> seemed to convey the "mine's a superior language" belief.  I appologise if
> that's not Marc's intention.  I make no appologies though, for
highlighting
> my distaste at the recent "trend".
>


Chris,

I think there is no trend. There always were posts of this nature and always
will be, but the majority of discussions here are focused on getting things
done in Ada. That's exactly what they should be about.
In fact, my feeling is that there is a trend of increased interest in doing
useful small scale development in Ada: so many posting are about tool and
libraries (GtkAda, XML, COM support etc.)

People, let's remember that this is a community. Sometimes people just want
to vent, or share something of no particular importance. If it is
semi-related to Ada, and not too frequent, I don't see any problem with
that.

[P.S: I agree with Brian and Chris's feeling: I suggest that before you
decide Ada is the final word on programming languages, you take a look at
more recent developments, esp. from the functional crowd. I think that those
unaware of these languages and approaches will find many interesting ideas,
worth knowing about.]

Ehud

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Marc A. Criley]

"chris.danx" wrote:
> 
> "Wes Groleau" <wwgrol@sparc01.ftw.rsc.raytheon.com> wrote in message
> 
> > 2. The particular post you complained about was not an
> >    "Ada is better" post.  It was expressing disbelief
> >    that someone is touting improvements on C as something
> >    special when they have been proven in Ada and other
> >    languages for over 20 years.
> 
> It was the tone of the post (which I may have taken the wrong way) that
> seemed to convey the "mine's a superior language" belief.  I appologise if
> that's not Marc's intention.  I make no appologies though, for highlighting
> my distaste at the recent "trend".

Wes' perception of my post is what I intended, just plain disbelief at
how type-checking is being considered a new concept.  As well as Marin's
observation that features that Ada has been criticized about by anti-Ada
zealots are now working their way into C-flavored languages and they're
now considered A Good Thing...

I certainly did not mean to convey an "Ada is superior, all other
languages suck" tone.  If I felt that, I wouldn't be able to write code
in C, C++, Java, Ada 83, Ada 95, Pascal, Modula 2, Fortran, Tcl, Basic,
and with a little refresher, COBOL and SNOBOL :-)

I don't think it's going too far out on limb to say that if programmers
were trained to an equal level of proficiency with Ada that they had
with C, that programming in Ada versus C would already result in a
noticeable drop in the defect rate, with the added benefit of proven,
optimizing compilers available right now.

Marc A. Criley
Senior Staff Engineer
Quadrus Corporation
www.quadruscorp.com

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Marin David Condic]

And of course those of us who have been around Ada for a while remember all
the criticisms of Ada tasking by the C/C++ crowd - how its totally useless,
way too slow, contributes to code bloat, etc., and why did you need it if
you could make perfectly good fork calls to an OS? (Hey! Wait a minute! I've
got this great idea how we could extend C++. Its this new concept I just now
invented called "Constraint Checking" where you can create a numeric type
that has limits on the values it can take... :-)

I suppose we should be happy that the C/C++ crowd is coming around to seeing
the wisdom of having things that Ada has had all along - and its probably
too much to expect that an apology be issued - but it continues to raise the
question: "Why not just use Ada and be done with it?"

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Jeffrey Carter" <jeffrey.carter@boeing.com> wrote in message
news:3BFAD75A.C964DE1C@boeing.com...
>
> That is not the impression I got from this post. Rather, it was, "How
> can they claim this is new when Ada has had it since Ada-80?"
>
> It reminds me more of reactions to an article a few years ago (sorry, no
> reference right now) on adding concurrency to C++ that was obviously an
> implementation of Ada-83 tasking in C++ terms, even using "entry",
> "accept", "select", "rendezvous", and so on, but that made no mention or
> reference to Ada, instead presenting the ideas as new and original with
> the author.
>

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Wes Groleau]

Gautier Write-only-address wrote:
> 
> >From: "Marin David Condic"
> 
> >If you listen to the marketing weenies, you'd believe that Windows
> >was something never before seen on this planet.
> 
> They are even able to sell Windows XP (2001) with the same arguments
> as Windows 3.10 (1992): *now*, you can do multimedia, see pictures,...

I remember when aspartame (Nutrisweet) was first approved in the U.S.
for drinks.  The drink makers were trying to say their product now
tastes good without admitting they had been lying about it before.

(P.S. it STILL tastes bad IMHO)

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Brian Rogoff]

On 20 Nov 2001, Mike Silva wrote:
> Why the extreme overreaction to this posting, which was mostly just
> direct quotes from a news article?

Why not complain about the original slander, err, posting. 

> What "idiocies" were posted?  

The title, for one. Didn't you read my post? 

> If the inferences the OP drew were incorrect then shouldn't the blame be
> placed on a poorly written news article?  If the OP "doesn't know
> anything" isn't that also the fault of the news article?

No. Do you believe evrything you read? Don't you try to check the veracity
of statements you read? 

> As I said, your extreme reaction makes no sense on the face of it --
> clearly there's something more behind your comments.

What extreme reaction? A Usenet post? One that contains a pointer to the
Cyclone home page, so that ignoramuses can extricate themselves from their 
predicament? I'm guessing you just don't like the fact that I'm calling
idiotic posts idiotic, rather than coming up with long winded, smarmy way 
of calling them idiotic, which is what people typically do here. Too bad, 
if it offends you, plonk me (that means "put my address in your killfile", 
nothing lewd ;) and you'll never need to read a post from me again. 

I notice that you didn't address a single one of the points I made, including 
the one that Ada wheels weren't being reinvented. Serendipity being what it
is, I'll include a post that I got today from the Caml mailing list by
someone who knows better about which wheels are being reinvented, and why
they don't "just use Ada", as other dim bulbs here have suggested. And,
FWIW, I believe Cyclone would have been a better language had they started 
with an Ada subset instead of C...

-- Brian

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 16:25:12 -0500
From: Michael Hicks <mhicks@cs.cornell.edu>
To: Berke Durak <berke@altern.org>, caml-list@inria.fr
Subject: RE: [Caml-list] Rewriting UNIX in Caml and getting rid of the C
disease

Just to resurrect this thread:

Many of your observations on the inadequacies of C (and those of the
people who followed up) are addressed in a language being developed at
Cornell and AT&T Research called Cyclone.  It incorporates successful
high-level language features to ensure safety, but unlike most
high-level languages, gives the programmer control over data
representation and, to a large extent, memory management (e.g. a GC is
not required).  Furthermore, Cyclone is very close to C, thus
simplifying the process of porting legacy code (we actually parse a
superset of C, but our type-checker is more restrictive, as you would
imagine).  In essence, the language was designed with just your sort of
systems project in mind.  So far we have written a 40,000 line compiler
in Cyclone, and ported nearly 30,000 lines of systems code.

So that I'm not too off-topic, I should say that OCaml has been a strong
influence on Cyclone---many of the OCaml libraries and tools were ported
to Cyclone, and many of OCaml's features have been added to allow more
high-level programming, if desired, including exceptions, pattern
matching, tagged unions (i.e. datatypes), and others.  Of course,
"OCaml-like" is not OCaml itself; OCaml should be the language of choice
for applications where low-level control is not as important (of which
there are many).

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/projects/cyclone/ has more details.  There is
much more to be done, and comments are welcomed.

Mike

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Berke Durak [mailto:berke@altern.org]
> Sent: Sunday, November 11, 2001 12:18 AM
> To: caml-list@inria.fr
> Subject: [Caml-list] Rewriting UNIX in Caml and getting rid of the C
> disease
> 
> 
> Everyone on this list will agree that the C language is far from being
> perfect. More specifically, if we consider its various derivatives
> together (i.e. the C preprocessor and C++) they form the worst piece
> of stinking, pathogen and toxic garbage in the realm of programming
> languages.
> 
> On the other hand, we almost all use and respect UNIX and its
> derivatives, which might seem to be a paradox, given that UNIX is
> entirely based on C.  I'm here considering UNIX from the system
> programmer's view, making abstraction of the way it's
> implemented. Certainly, it could get much better, but, practically, it
> is just fine.
> 
> Unfortunately, the C language acts as a mandatory layer over
> UNIX. Generating an executable for a given brand of UNIX without going
> thru the C library is tricky because it requires to know how the
> system calls work. These are, first, not documented (because you're
> supposed to go thru the C library), and, second, depend precisely on
> #ifdef-infested C source code, and are subject to revision.
> 
> Therefore, in the interests of humanity, I hereby propose that :
> 
>                               ***
> 
> An appropriate sublanguage of Caml should be isolated, and a given,
> well-accepted brand of UNIX should be reimplemented in that language.
> Binary compatibility must be retained as far as possible. Basic system
> utilities (including a shell) should also be translated (into full
> Ocaml). Since the use of Caml will, a) divide the source code size by,
> say, ten and b) automatically remove, say, 95% of all bugs and
> security holes (since most are illnesses resulting from pointer
> manipulation), success is guaranteed.
> 
>                               ***
> 
> Progress has to be made in operating systems. C blocks that progress.
> C must be obliterated.
> 
> The use and existence of a Caml-based UNIX, with a (justified)
> reputation of very good security and integrity, will invariably
> attract a lot of hackers (in the good sense) to Caml. It will also
> make existing Caml programmers a valuable resource.
> 
> The use of Caml might also facilitate the verification of some parts
> of it using Coq, even if I don't know what part of an operating system
> you could usefully verify by formal methods.
> 
> For marketing purposes, a bijective mapping between some sort of
> subgrammar of C and the sublanguage of Caml could be provided.
> 
> For people worrying about speed, I'd just remind them that not so long
> ago, C itself was considered pretty slow and inefficient a language
> (maybe the compilers weren't as good), yet operating systems 
> were written in C and used on computers a thousand times slower than
> what we have today.
> 
> Finally, the task of translating UNIX from C to Caml, if certainly
> not straightforward, is certainly feasible with a predictable amount
> of work, and could even be made semi-automatically.
> --
> Berke
> -------------------
> Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs  FAQ: 
http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/
To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr  Archives:
http://caml.inria.fr
-------------------
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To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr  Archives:
http://caml.inria.fr

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Mark Lundquist]

"Brian Rogoff" <bpr@bpr.best.vwh.net> wrote in message
news:Pine.BSF.4.10.10111212226350.12326-100000@bpr.best.vwh.net...

> Serendipity being what it
> is, I'll include a post that I got today from the Caml mailing list by
> someone who knows better about which wheels are being reinvented, and why
> they don't "just use Ada"

(You mean, "just use OCaml"...)

That _was_ very funny!
:-) :-) :-)
-- mark

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[chris.danx]

"Ehud Lamm" <mslamm@mscc.huji.ac.il> wrote in message
news:9tfrtg$rkl$1@news.huji.ac.il...
> chris.danx <chris.danx@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
> news:RsyK7.1377$6W6.439742@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com...
> >
> > It was the tone of the post (which I may have taken the wrong way) that
> > seemed to convey the "mine's a superior language" belief.  I appologise
if
> > that's not Marc's intention.  I make no appologies though, for
> highlighting
> > my distaste at the recent "trend".
> >
>
>
> Chris,
>
> I think there is no trend. There always were posts of this nature and
always
> will be, but the majority of discussions here are focused on getting
things
> done in Ada. That's exactly what they should be about.

I agree in part.  It's ok to discuss the merits of Ada, but it is not ok to
bash a language to glorify (for lack of a better word, you know what I mean)
Ada.  The New Scientist article *may have been* bit biased but it's one
article, the cyclone site doesn't give that impression though (IMO).


> In fact, my feeling is that there is a trend of increased interest in
doing
> useful small scale development in Ada: so many posting are about tool and
> libraries (GtkAda, XML, COM support etc.)

That is good, and Ada is a good language.

That is not what i'm complaining about, it's the *persistant* C bashing (or
C decendant bashing) in this group, which rears it's head now and again.
I'm no fan of C (for some reason I can't program in it, no matter what I
do), but bashing it all the time is pointless.  Maybe it makes ppl feel
secure, but a closed mind is bad.  What happens if a language comes about
that has the superior gains (in respect to development time, maintainance
costs, program correctness, etc) compared to Ada?  (some interesting
languages already exist which *may* offer gains, but it's subjective as to
what counts as 'better' so I won't mention any of these *interesting*
languages, and some folk have probably heard of them anyway).  Someone with
an open mind would atleast consider looking at such a language.  I don't get
the sense that this would happen.  I'm not suggesting everyone jump ship,
just consider that other languages exist and don't slag them off just
because they aren't the language you program in.

I think the ppl behind Cyclone recognise that there are better ways of doing
things, and that it's hard to get these ideas across to ppl.  They're trying
to get these ideas across to C programmers using what those programmers know
already.  Don't bash them for it.


Goodnight,
Chris

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Brian Rogoff]

On Thu, 22 Nov 2001, Mark Lundquist wrote:
> "Brian Rogoff" <bpr@bpr.best.vwh.net> wrote in message
> news:Pine.BSF.4.10.10111212226350.12326-100000@bpr.best.vwh.net...
> 
> > Serendipity being what it
> > is, I'll include a post that I got today from the Caml mailing list by
> > someone who knows better about which wheels are being reinvented, and why
> > they don't "just use Ada"
> 
> (You mean, "just use OCaml"...)

:-)

While I like OCaml and use it a lot, there are quite a few tasks for which
Ada is just a better language. Still, I think one could design an Ada-like 
language which borrowed some features from high level languages without
compromising any of its advantages. Cyclone shows how, though it is stuck 
with a C base. 

One thing that's a bit irritating about Cyclone is that it only has genericity 
for reference types. One of the interesting aspects of Cyclone which we
may see in Ada 200X (well Tucker Taft said we may anyways) is region based
memory management. Then I'll post a "Ada 0X : reinventing the wheel" message :-)

> That _was_ very funny!

I bet you really liked the post that started the thread where C is referred to 
as a toxic piece of garbage. And my post was called extreme!

-- Brian

PS : I really have nothing against C, it's just unfortunate that a
glorified portable assembler became the dominant application programming
language. So many wasted man-hours....

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[AG]

"chris.danx" <chris.danx@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:bIXK7.6588$aW3.919092@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com...
>
> "Ehud Lamm" <mslamm@mscc.huji.ac.il> wrote in message
> news:9tfrtg$rkl$1@news.huji.ac.il...
> > chris.danx <chris.danx@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
> > news:RsyK7.1377$6W6.439742@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com...

I wasn't going to join this thread, but since you've highlighted the
*persistant*
below I couldn't resist. Well, you see, according to the Webster's
dictionary
there is no such word, period. The best approximation would be *persistEnt*
(pardon my use of the caps). And the whole point is that you or I can, may
and will make mistakes, but it's up to the compiler to catch at *least* the
simple ones like that.

> That is not what i'm complaining about, it's the *persistant* C bashing
(or
> C decendant bashing) in this group, which rears it's head now and again.
> I'm no fan of C (for some reason I can't program in it, no matter what I
> do), but bashing it all the time is pointless.

Not quite that pointless as you were kind enough to show.

>  What happens if a language comes about
> that has the superior gains (in respect to development time, maintainance
> costs, program correctness, etc) compared to Ada?

That would be just great.

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[chris.danx]

"Jeffrey Carter" <jeffrey.carter@boeing.com> wrote in message
news:3BFAD75A.C964DE1C@boeing.com...
> "chris.danx" wrote:
> >
> > Hmm, I'm getting fed up with posts like this ... "my
> > language is better than yours"
>
> That is not the impression I got from this post. Rather, it was, "How
> can they claim this is new when Ada has had it since Ada-80?"

"The idea is to take good security ideas from higher level languages and
implement them at a lower level"

That suggests they actually know about other languages, and they are trying
to bring those ideas to C.  The Cyclone developers don't seem to be claiming
that their ideas are new, or have never been a good thing; rather they are
suggesting the opposite, C lacks some constructs which other languages have
(which are good things) and they're trying to get those ideas across to C
programmers.



Chris

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[IsraelRT]

On Tue, 20 Nov 2001 12:36:41 GMT, "Marc A. Criley"
<mcqada@earthlink.net> wrote:

>So now scientists at Cornell have come up with a "a new computer
>language designed to avoid unforeseen programming errors".
>
>How?  "The Cyclone compiler identifies segments of code that could
>eventually cause such problems using a 'type-checking engine'.  This
>does not just look for specific strings of code, but analyses the code's
>purpose and singles out conflicts known to be potentially dangerous."
>
>The article is at
>http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991578.

Relying on New Scientist can be dangerous...

Check http://www.cs.cornell.edu/talc/overview.html for the real
information on typed target languages.

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[IsraelRT]

On Tue, 20 Nov 2001 11:54:59 -0500, Wes Groleau
<wwgrol@sparc01.ftw.rsc.raytheon.com> wrote:

>2. The particular post you complained about was not an
>   "Ada is better" post.  It was expressing disbelief
>   that someone is touting improvements on C as something
>   special when they have been proven in Ada and other
>   languages for over 20 years.

Actually the post was by an ignorant and intelelctually lazy idiot who
had not bothered to find out for himself just what Cyclone consists of
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/talc/overview.html

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Preben Randhol]

On Thu, 22 Nov 2001 22:46:02 +1100, IsraelRT wrote:
> 
> Actually the post was by an ignorant and intelelctually lazy idiot who
> had not bothered to find out for himself just what Cyclone consists of
> http://www.cs.cornell.edu/talc/overview.html

What is the connection between Cyclone and Talc?

-- 
 ()   Join the worldwide campaign to protect fundamental human rights.
'||}
{||'                                           http://www.amnesty.org/

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Gautier Write-only-address]

>From: "chris.danx" <chris.danx@ntlworld.com>

>"The idea is to take good security ideas from higher level languages
>and implement them at a lower level"

>That suggests they actually know about other languages, and they are
>trying to bring those ideas to C.  The Cyclone developers don't seem to be 
>claiming that their ideas are new, or have never been a good
>thing; rather they are suggesting the opposite, C lacks some
>constructs which other languages have (which are good things) and
>they're trying to get those ideas across to C programmers.

Exactly, they don't claim to do better, and the aim is valuable,
e.g. to debug legacy C code: there will be more and more code where
the programmer(s) is/are no more living and where documentation
is lost.

More questionable is the lack of distance from the New Scientist
journalist's side, who doesn't suggest the existence of alternatives
for that problem - e.g. in some cases, it would be better to
reprogram in more modern languages than sticking to C. And...
will a "stronger C" be accepted by programmers if it has lost
its "quick & dirty" features ? Where is the tradeoff between
compatibility and security in that Cyclone ? That would be
interesting information.

____________________________________________________________
Gautier  --  http://www.mysunrise.ch/users/gdm/index.htm#Ada

NB: Do not answer to sender address, visit the Web site!
    Ne r�pondez pas � l'exp�diteur, visitez le site ouaibe!


_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Marc A. Criley]

IsraelRT wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 20 Nov 2001 12:36:41 GMT, "Marc A. Criley"
> <mcqada@earthlink.net> wrote:
> 
> >So now scientists at Cornell have come up with a "a new computer
> >language designed to avoid unforeseen programming errors".
> >
> >How?  "The Cyclone compiler identifies segments of code that could
> >eventually cause such problems using a 'type-checking engine'.  This
> >does not just look for specific strings of code, but analyses the code's
> >purpose and singles out conflicts known to be potentially dangerous."
> >
> >The article is at
> >http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991578.
> 
> Relying on New Scientist can be dangerous...

So I see.

Forgive me for receiving an article brief from the ACM Technical mailing
list, exercising due diligence by reading the full text of the article
in New Scientist, then apprising this newsgroup of its contents (with a
posting containing a mild lament that the goal of this language--safer
programming--is one that has been manifest in Ada since its creation.)

Assuming the New Scientist article was reasonably accurate, I abstracted
it into a brief posting that was at least half quotes from the article. 
In addition, I stated that I was sure this was not just "C with
constraint checking", because something as simple as that would hardly
merit academic reasearch (I'm serious about that, not sarcastic).

My intent then was to take the next opportunity to do a little more
research on Cyclone and get the full story behind the New Scientist
article.

But since I'm an idiot, an ignoramus, and don't know anything, I
probably wouldn't understand it.

Marc A. Criley

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[chris.danx]

"IsraelRT" <israelrt@optushome.com.au> wrote in message
news:v7ppvt4ctj2vigfgpdk7k9oemmdricip15@4ax.com...
> On Tue, 20 Nov 2001 11:54:59 -0500, Wes Groleau
> <wwgrol@sparc01.ftw.rsc.raytheon.com> wrote:
>
> >2. The particular post you complained about was not an
> >   "Ada is better" post.  It was expressing disbelief
> >   that someone is touting improvements on C as something
> >   special when they have been proven in Ada and other
> >   languages for over 20 years.
>
> Actually the post was by an ignorant and intelelctually lazy idiot who
> had not bothered to find out for himself just what Cyclone consists of
> http://www.cs.cornell.edu/talc/overview.html

That's nasty!  Don't post such nasty (personal) attacks here.

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[James Rogers]

Gautier Write-only-address wrote:
> will a "stronger C" be accepted by programmers if it has lost
> its "quick & dirty" features ? Where is the tradeoff between
> compatibility and security in that Cyclone ? That would be
> interesting information.

This, of course, is yet to be seen. 

After reading *some* of the Cyclone documentation I see that there is
a strong compatibility with classic C. Two incompatibilities are
implicit conversions and pointer arithmetic. Implicit conversions are
severely limited in Cyclone because of strong type checking.
Pointer arithmetic is allowed only when using "fat" pointers.
These "fat" pointers are used for array indices and maintain array
range information, making them "fatter" than normal pointers.

The normal C pointer notation still exists:

  int a = 10;
  int *b = &a;

This notation does not allow pointer arithmetic. Fat pointers are
created as follows:

  int a[10];
  int ?b = a;

This creates a fat pointer to the beginning of the "a" array.

Note that fat pointers make pointer arithmetic safer, but they do
not make array indexing safer.

Cyclone still uses the C #include technology, with all its power
and dangers. Cyclone does generate run-time checking to enhance
software safety. I believe this run-time checking will be its
undoing in the C community. Run-time checking will make 
Cyclone executables larger than executables created from a C
compiler using the same source code. 

It is my opinion that the C community still values small executable
size over software safety. If this was not true most people in the
C community would use a safer language.

Jim Rogers
Colorado Springs, Colorado USA

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Brian Rogoff]

On Thu, 22 Nov 2001, Marc A. Criley wrote:
> IsraelRT wrote:
> > 
> > On Tue, 20 Nov 2001 12:36:41 GMT, "Marc A. Criley"
> > <mcqada@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > 
> > >So now scientists at Cornell have come up with a "a new computer
> > >language designed to avoid unforeseen programming errors".
> > >
> > >How?  "The Cyclone compiler identifies segments of code that could
> > >eventually cause such problems using a 'type-checking engine'.  This
> > >does not just look for specific strings of code, but analyses the code's
> > >purpose and singles out conflicts known to be potentially dangerous."
> > >
> > >The article is at
> > >http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991578.
> > 
> > Relying on New Scientist can be dangerous...
> 
> So I see.
> 
> Forgive me for receiving an article brief from the ACM Technical mailing
> list, exercising due diligence by reading the full text of the article
> in New Scientist, then apprising this newsgroup of its contents (with a
> posting containing a mild lament that the goal of this language--safer
> programming--is one that has been manifest in Ada since its creation.)

Be honest Marc. Read the title of your own post. It's clear to me that
this post was not dispassionate observation, but a snide attempt to
disparage Cyclone on behalf of Ada. The ACM mailing list usually refers 
to popular journals which are known to be poor sources of information. 

Simply typing "cyclone cornell language" into Google brings you right to
the Cyclone home page. 

I've read lots of negative propaganda about Ada in the popular press, in
fact I've even heard it from the mouths of respected academicians at
Stanford. Does that kind of idiocy bear repeating here? Wouldn't you laugh
at me if I used "The New Hacker Dictionary" to indict Ada?

> Assuming the New Scientist article was reasonably accurate, I abstracted
> it into a brief posting that was at least half quotes from the article. 
> In addition, I stated that I was sure this was not just "C with
> constraint checking", because something as simple as that would hardly
> merit academic reasearch (I'm serious about that, not sarcastic).
> 
> My intent then was to take the next opportunity to do a little more
> research on Cyclone and get the full story behind the New Scientist
> article.

You're being disingenuous again, Marc. The title of this thread suggests 
that *you* are simply saying "Why do these idiots bother creating yet
another C variant when Ada already has everything they want?"

> But since I'm an idiot, an ignoramus, and don't know anything, I
> probably wouldn't understand it.

Your *post* was certainly idiotic and ignorant, but it's a big leap from
there to the insult you're responding to. 

-- Brian

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Jeffrey Carter]

"chris.danx" wrote:
> 
> "Jeffrey Carter" <jeffrey.carter@boeing.com> wrote in message
> news:3BFAD75A.C964DE1C@boeing.com...
> > "chris.danx" wrote:
> > >
> > > Hmm, I'm getting fed up with posts like this ... "my
> > > language is better than yours"
> >
> > That is not the impression I got from this post. Rather, it was, "How
> > can they claim this is new when Ada has had it since Ada-80?"
> 
> "The idea is to take good security ideas from higher level languages and
> implement them at a lower level"
> 
> That suggests they actually know about other languages, and they are trying
> to bring those ideas to C.  The Cyclone developers don't seem to be claiming
> that their ideas are new, or have never been a good thing; rather they are
> suggesting the opposite, C lacks some constructs which other languages have
> (which are good things) and they're trying to get those ideas across to C
> programmers.

You are referring to the article; I was referring to the post, as I
explicitly stated.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"Death awaits you all, with nasty, big, pointy teeth!"
Monty Python & the Holy Grail

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Mike Silva]

Brian,

I still have to wonder if we're reading the same post.  For example,
you claim in another post that the in the OP "C is referred to as a
toxic piece of garbage."  Huh???  Anyway, I don't dislike what you
said, nor am I offended, just bewildered.  And I have no desire to
killfile you, since you are a frequent contributor to the group, and
thus to my desire to learn.

Mike

Brian Rogoff <bpr@bpr.best.vwh.net> wrote in message news:<Pine.BSF.4.10.10111212226350.12326-100000@bpr.best.vwh.net>...
> On 20 Nov 2001, Mike Silva wrote:
> > Why the extreme overreaction to this posting, which was mostly just
> > direct quotes from a news article?
> 
> Why not complain about the original slander, err, posting. 
> 
> > What "idiocies" were posted?  
> 
> The title, for one. Didn't you read my post? 
> 
> > If the inferences the OP drew were incorrect then shouldn't the blame be
> > placed on a poorly written news article?  If the OP "doesn't know
> > anything" isn't that also the fault of the news article?
> 
> No. Do you believe evrything you read? Don't you try to check the veracity
> of statements you read? 
> 
> > As I said, your extreme reaction makes no sense on the face of it --
> > clearly there's something more behind your comments.
> 
> What extreme reaction? A Usenet post? One that contains a pointer to the
> Cyclone home page, so that ignoramuses can extricate themselves from their 
> predicament? I'm guessing you just don't like the fact that I'm calling
> idiotic posts idiotic, rather than coming up with long winded, smarmy way 
> of calling them idiotic, which is what people typically do here. Too bad, 
> if it offends you, plonk me (that means "put my address in your killfile", 
> nothing lewd ;) and you'll never need to read a post from me again. 
> 
> I notice that you didn't address a single one of the points I made, including 
> the one that Ada wheels weren't being reinvented. Serendipity being what it
> is, I'll include a post that I got today from the Caml mailing list by
> someone who knows better about which wheels are being reinvented, and why
> they don't "just use Ada", as other dim bulbs here have suggested. And,
> FWIW, I believe Cyclone would have been a better language had they started 
> with an Ada subset instead of C...
> 
> -- Brian
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 16:25:12 -0500
> From: Michael Hicks <mhicks@cs.cornell.edu>
> To: Berke Durak <berke@altern.org>, caml-list@inria.fr
> Subject: RE: [Caml-list] Rewriting UNIX in Caml and getting rid of the C
> disease
> 
> Just to resurrect this thread:
> 
> Many of your observations on the inadequacies of C (and those of the
> people who followed up) are addressed in a language being developed at
> Cornell and AT&T Research called Cyclone.  It incorporates successful
> high-level language features to ensure safety, but unlike most
> high-level languages, gives the programmer control over data
> representation and, to a large extent, memory management (e.g. a GC is
> not required).  Furthermore, Cyclone is very close to C, thus
> simplifying the process of porting legacy code (we actually parse a
> superset of C, but our type-checker is more restrictive, as you would
> imagine).  In essence, the language was designed with just your sort of
> systems project in mind.  So far we have written a 40,000 line compiler
> in Cyclone, and ported nearly 30,000 lines of systems code.
> 
> So that I'm not too off-topic, I should say that OCaml has been a strong
> influence on Cyclone---many of the OCaml libraries and tools were ported
> to Cyclone, and many of OCaml's features have been added to allow more
> high-level programming, if desired, including exceptions, pattern
> matching, tagged unions (i.e. datatypes), and others.  Of course,
> "OCaml-like" is not OCaml itself; OCaml should be the language of choice
> for applications where low-level control is not as important (of which
> there are many).
> 
> http://www.cs.cornell.edu/projects/cyclone/ has more details.  There is
> much more to be done, and comments are welcomed.
> 
> Mike
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Berke Durak [mailto:berke@altern.org]
> > Sent: Sunday, November 11, 2001 12:18 AM
> > To: caml-list@inria.fr
> > Subject: [Caml-list] Rewriting UNIX in Caml and getting rid of the C
> > disease
> > 
> > 
> > Everyone on this list will agree that the C language is far from being
> > perfect. More specifically, if we consider its various derivatives
> > together (i.e. the C preprocessor and C++) they form the worst piece
> > of stinking, pathogen and toxic garbage in the realm of programming
> > languages.
> > 
> > On the other hand, we almost all use and respect UNIX and its
> > derivatives, which might seem to be a paradox, given that UNIX is
> > entirely based on C.  I'm here considering UNIX from the system
> > programmer's view, making abstraction of the way it's
> > implemented. Certainly, it could get much better, but, practically, it
> > is just fine.
> > 
> > Unfortunately, the C language acts as a mandatory layer over
> > UNIX. Generating an executable for a given brand of UNIX without going
> > thru the C library is tricky because it requires to know how the
> > system calls work. These are, first, not documented (because you're
> > supposed to go thru the C library), and, second, depend precisely on
> > #ifdef-infested C source code, and are subject to revision.
> > 
> > Therefore, in the interests of humanity, I hereby propose that :
> > 
> >                               ***
> > 
> > An appropriate sublanguage of Caml should be isolated, and a given,
> > well-accepted brand of UNIX should be reimplemented in that language.
> > Binary compatibility must be retained as far as possible. Basic system
> > utilities (including a shell) should also be translated (into full
> > Ocaml). Since the use of Caml will, a) divide the source code size by,
> > say, ten and b) automatically remove, say, 95% of all bugs and
> > security holes (since most are illnesses resulting from pointer
> > manipulation), success is guaranteed.
> > 
> >                               ***
> > 
> > Progress has to be made in operating systems. C blocks that progress.
> > C must be obliterated.
> > 
> > The use and existence of a Caml-based UNIX, with a (justified)
> > reputation of very good security and integrity, will invariably
> > attract a lot of hackers (in the good sense) to Caml. It will also
> > make existing Caml programmers a valuable resource.
> > 
> > The use of Caml might also facilitate the verification of some parts
> > of it using Coq, even if I don't know what part of an operating system
> > you could usefully verify by formal methods.
> > 
> > For marketing purposes, a bijective mapping between some sort of
> > subgrammar of C and the sublanguage of Caml could be provided.
> > 
> > For people worrying about speed, I'd just remind them that not so long
> > ago, C itself was considered pretty slow and inefficient a language
> > (maybe the compilers weren't as good), yet operating systems 
> > were written in C and used on computers a thousand times slower than
> > what we have today.
> > 
> > Finally, the task of translating UNIX from C to Caml, if certainly
> > not straightforward, is certainly feasible with a predictable amount
> > of work, and could even be made semi-automatically.
> > --
> > Berke
> > -------------------
> > Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs  FAQ: 
> http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/
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Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Brian Rogoff]

On 22 Nov 2001, Mike Silva wrote:
> Brian,
> 
> I still have to wonder if we're reading the same post.  For example,
> you claim in another post that the in the OP "C is referred to as a
> toxic piece of garbage."

Check again. Mark Lundquist commented on a post I made in which I included
a mail from the Caml list, and that mail thread (the one from the Caml
list) was initiated by a poster who made that comment about C. I wasn't 
referring to Marc Criley, the originator of this thread on c.l.a.

Anyways, this has gone on for way too long. Some people have started
making criticisms of Cyclone based on reading the Cyclone page, and that
is a good thing. It would be more productive to hijack this thread and 
start discussing region based memory management, which has a chance of
getting into Ada, or even pattern matching, which IMO would really be in
the spirit of Ada and would be great in an Ada like language. 

-- Brian

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Colin Paul Gloster]

In article news:slrn9vprfi.440.randhol+abuse@kiuk0156.chembio.ntnu.no
Preben Randhol wrote:
"On Thu, 22 Nov 2001 22:46:02 +1100, IsraelRT wrote:
> 
> Actually the post was by an ignorant and intelelctually lazy idiot who
> had not bothered to find out for himself just what Cyclone consists of
> http://www.cs.cornell.edu/talc/overview.html

What is the connection between Cyclone and Talc?"

From HTTP://WWW.CS.Cornell.edu/talc/related.html :
"Luke Hornof and Trevor Jim have a system for doing
run-time code generation in TAL. Check out Cyclone for details."

From the out of date http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~cyclone/ which
has TAL listed under a related projects heading of "Certifying
Compilation":
"Cyclone was developed in collaboration with Greg Morrisett and the TAL
project at Cornell".

(Current website is http://www.research.att.com/projects/cyclone/ .)

This still does not account for the characterizations in
news:v7ppvt4ctj2vigfgpdk7k9oemmdricip15@4ax.com by
IsraelRT <israelrt@optushome.com.au> . I request that that person
sends a response.

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Marc A. Criley]

Brian Rogoff wrote:
> 
> Be honest Marc. Read the title of your own post. It's clear to me that
> this post was not dispassionate observation, but a snide attempt to
> disparage Cyclone on behalf of Ada.

I agree it wasn't dispassionate, but I hardly considered it snide.  To
me, it was indeed intentionally a little provocative to catch people's
attention, but apparently my line between provocative and snide doesn't
line up with that of some other's--which is fine, everyone has their own
set of hot buttons, including me :-)

> The ACM mailing list usually refers
> to popular journals which are known to be poor sources of information.

I agree that the referenced publications are typically popular, since
those are most readily available on newsstands and the Internet
(InfoWorld, Scientific American, LA Times, NY Times, MSNBC, etc.).  But
referring to them, their articles, and the authors of those articles as
"poor sources of information" seems a bit unfair.

> 
> Simply typing "cyclone cornell language" into Google brings you right to
> the Cyclone home page.
> 
> I've read lots of negative propaganda about Ada in the popular press, in
> fact I've even heard it from the mouths of respected academicians at
> Stanford. Does that kind of idiocy bear repeating here? Wouldn't you laugh
> at me if I used "The New Hacker Dictionary" to indict Ada?

Yes I would, but then I wouldn't give "The New Hacker Dictionary" the
same credence I would an article in "New Scientist".

> > Assuming the New Scientist article was reasonably accurate, I abstracted
> > it into a brief posting that was at least half quotes from the article.
> > In addition, I stated that I was sure this was not just "C with
> > constraint checking", because something as simple as that would hardly
> > merit academic reasearch (I'm serious about that, not sarcastic).
> >
> > My intent then was to take the next opportunity to do a little more
> > research on Cyclone and get the full story behind the New Scientist
> > article.
> 
> You're being disingenuous again, Marc. The title of this thread suggests
> that *you* are simply saying "Why do these idiots bother creating yet
> another C variant when Ada already has everything they want?"

Okay, bad title.  Carried more connotations than I intended.

> > But since I'm an idiot, an ignoramus, and don't know anything, I
> > probably wouldn't understand it.
> 
> Your *post* was certainly idiotic and ignorant, but it's a big leap from
> there to the insult you're responding to.

Well, I disagree on the merits of the intent of the original post, but
do refer to "IsaelRT"'s posting regarding unwarranted personal attacks.

Marc

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Mark Lundquist]

"Brian Rogoff" <bpr@bpr.best.vwh.net> wrote in message
news:Pine.BSF.4.10.10111220030230.12326-100000@bpr.best.vwh.net...
> One of the interesting aspects of Cyclone which we
> may see in Ada 200X (well Tucker Taft said we may anyways) is region based
> memory management. Then I'll post a "Ada 0X : reinventing the wheel"
message :-)

Another area where I'd like to see Ada 0X "reinvent the wheel" is in the
area of generics.

In the Ada world we do tend to view C++ templates as just an inferior
knockoff of Ada generics.  But they do have some good things going for them.
I don't think that Ada generics should be like C++ templates in general, but
I do think that Ada or an Ada-like language should have something like
template specialization / partial specialization in C++.

-- Mark

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Mon, 26 Nov 2001 10:42:54 GMT, "Mark Lundquist"
<up.yerz@nospam.com> wrote:

>
>"Brian Rogoff" <bpr@bpr.best.vwh.net> wrote in message
>news:Pine.BSF.4.10.10111220030230.12326-100000@bpr.best.vwh.net...
>> One of the interesting aspects of Cyclone which we
>> may see in Ada 200X (well Tucker Taft said we may anyways) is region based
>> memory management. Then I'll post a "Ada 0X : reinventing the wheel"
>message :-)
>
>Another area where I'd like to see Ada 0X "reinvent the wheel" is in the
>area of generics.
>
>In the Ada world we do tend to view C++ templates as just an inferior
>knockoff of Ada generics.  But they do have some good things going for them.
>I don't think that Ada generics should be like C++ templates in general, but
>I do think that Ada or an Ada-like language should have something like
>template specialization / partial specialization in C++.

I think it would be better to review tagged types and provide
user-written compile-time subroutines to reduce use of generics.

Regards,
Dmitry Kazakov

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Mark Lundquist]

"Dmitry A. Kazakov" <dmitry@elros.cbb-automation.de> wrote in message
news:3c034c88.494656@News.CIS.DFN.DE...
> On Mon, 26 Nov 2001 10:42:54 GMT, "Mark Lundquist"
>
> >I do think that Ada or an Ada-like language should have something like
> >template specialization / partial specialization in C++.
>
> I think it would be better to review tagged types and provide
> user-written compile-time subroutines to reduce use of generics.

Actually, template "metaprogramming" doesn't really excite me (and I don't
think generics should be macros anyway).  I'm interested in template
specialization for the purpose for which it was originally designed, and
also for trait programming.

When you say "review tagged types", is that related, or an entirely
different concern?  (I remember you were the one who wanted multiple
dispatch a while back... :-)

Mark Lundquist
http://members.home.com/mlundquist2/consulting

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Brian Rogoff]

On Tue, 27 Nov 2001, Mark Lundquist wrote:
> "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <dmitry@elros.cbb-automation.de> wrote in message
> news:3c034c88.494656@News.CIS.DFN.DE...
> > On Mon, 26 Nov 2001 10:42:54 GMT, "Mark Lundquist"
> >
> > >I do think that Ada or an Ada-like language should have something like
> > >template specialization / partial specialization in C++.
> >
> > I think it would be better to review tagged types and provide
> > user-written compile-time subroutines to reduce use of generics.
> 
> Actually, template "metaprogramming" doesn't really excite me

I admit, I find it pretty neat, but that's not what I want when I long for 
automatic instantiation. Once you have a combination of type inference and 
overloading its too easy to get non-termination as a feature of type
checking. If I really want template metaprogramming, better to just have 
Lisp style procedural macros. 

> (and I don't think generics should be macros anyway).

As an implementation strategy, its fine, but I agree that generics are a
different beast. 

> I'm interested in template specialization for the purpose for which it
> was originally designed, and also for trait programming.

Yes, and in an Ada like language generics should still obey the contract
model. 

> When you say "review tagged types", is that related, or an entirely
> different concern?  (I remember you were the one who wanted multiple
> dispatch a while back... :-)

MD is a nice feature, and I like it in Lisp/Dylan, but I think its a bit
much for a language like Ada. 

I'm of the opinion that genericity is the part of Ada that could use some 
enhancement. Once Ada gets some Java-like interface capability in its OO 
part, that should be enough. 

-- Brian

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Mark Lundquist]

"Brian Rogoff" <bpr@bpr.best.vwh.net> wrote in message
news:Pine.BSF.4.10.10111271642360.93360-100000@bpr.best.vwh.net...
> On Tue, 27 Nov 2001, Mark Lundquist wrote
>
> > Actually, template "metaprogramming" doesn't really excite me
>
> I admit, I find it pretty neat, but that's not what I want when I long for
> automatic instantiation. Once you have a combination of type inference and
> overloading its too easy to get non-termination as a feature of type
> checking. If I really want template metaprogramming, better to just have
> Lisp style procedural macros.

agreed

>
> MD is a nice feature, and I like it in Lisp/Dylan, but I think its a bit
> much for a language like Ada.

Agree, and anyhow is there a case for MD that cannot be solved using the
redispatching idiom in Ada?

>
> I'm of the opinion that genericity is the part of Ada that could use some
> enhancement. Once Ada gets some Java-like interface capability in its OO
> part, that should be enough.

I dunno... I really like the multiple views idiom.  But I'd probably be
outvoted on that one :-)

-- mark

Re: 'Cyclone', a safer C--reinventing the wheel

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Wed, 28 Nov 2001 18:23:23 GMT, "Mark Lundquist"
<up.yerz@nospam.com> wrote:

>
>"Brian Rogoff" <bpr@bpr.best.vwh.net> wrote in message
>news:Pine.BSF.4.10.10111271642360.93360-100000@bpr.best.vwh.net...
>> On Tue, 27 Nov 2001, Mark Lundquist wrote

>> MD is a nice feature, and I like it in Lisp/Dylan, but I think its a bit
>> much for a language like Ada.
>
>Agree, and anyhow is there a case for MD that cannot be solved using the
>redispatching idiom in Ada?

It seems so. But IMO redispatching (and thus an obligatory
by-reference parameter passing) should be dropped anyway if the goal
is "all types are tagged" [?].

Regards,
Dmitry Kazakov