New blog post: Rules, Types, and Glue: A Multi-Paradigm Architecture for Game Simulation 🎮🧱

A deep dive into combining classical AI and strict type systems for high-performance simulation engines. I evaluate:
🧠 Prolog for symbolic reasoning (Rules)
🧱 Coalton for static type-safety (Types)
🔄 Common Lisp as the high-speed runtime (Glue)

Includes SBCL vs. ECL performance benchmarks.

Read it here: https://dwightaspencer.com/posts/03-rules-types-and-glue/

#CommonLisp #Prolog #StandardML #FunctionalProgramming #GameDev #Simulation

Some late nights, when I lie down in bed (you know, to work), my outmoded brain keeps screaming in my mind's ear that #CS undies should be taught "functional system #programming"—<𝜆|σ>, as it were—in OG FP languages, like #StandardML or #OCaml, on a proper academic+industrial #OS, like FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, or a similar BSD #UNIX. (Sorry, AT&T, you lost me, after your 6th Edition, or maybe your 7th Edition; but then, who cares, at this point.)

• "UNIX System Programming with Standard ML", Shipman (2001)
http://www.mlton.org/References.attachments/Shipman02.pdf
• "UNIX System Programming in OCaml", Leroy (2014)
https://ocaml.github.io/ocamlunix/ocamlunix.pdf

Does *anyone* actually like Moscow ML's insistence that structures live in files with identical names (e.g., `structure Foo_Fabricator` MUST live in the file `Foo_Fabricator.sml` and MUST have a signature with identical name `signature Foo_Fabricator` which itself lives in the file `Foo_Fabricator.sig`)?

I always thought it idiomatic Standard ML to use SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE for signature names, which breaks Moscow ML's conventions (unless you put it in SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE-sig.sml and compiled it as a toplevel unit...which kinda breaks the whole module-as-compilation-unit idea?).

And Moscow ML *hates* it when you include the signature and a structure within the *same* file, because that violates its hardcoded assumptions about the world.

And another thing...

#MoscowML #StandardML #functional_programming #naming #convention #programming

A little gem of an opening salvo from the "Learning #StandardML", #Tufts U Comp 105 course handout:

————
For someone with a background in COMP 11 and COMP 15, the fastest and easiest way to learn Standard ML is to buy Ullman’s book and work through chapters 2, 3, 5, and 6. But many students choose not to buy Ullman—a move that saves money but costs time. You can recover some of the time by reading this guide; it enumerates the most important concepts, and it tells you where to find key information, not just in Ullman, but also in three other sources:

• Jeff Ullman’s "Elements of ML Programming" (ML’97 edition)
• Norman Ramsey’s "Programming Languages: Build, Prove, and Compare"
• Mads Tofte’s “Tips for Computer Scientists on Standard ML" (Revised)
• Bob Harper’s draft "Programming in Standard ML"

Know your sources! Mads Tofte and Bob Harper both worked with Robin Milner on the design of Standard ML, and they helped write the Definition of Standard ML. They know what they’re talking about, and they have good taste—though Tofte’s use of the ML modules is considered idiosyncratic. Norman Ramsey at least knows some functional programming. Jeff Ullman, by contrast, got his start in the theory of formal languages and parsing, then switched to databases. He may like ML, but he doesn’t understand it the way the others do.
————

I don't know any professors who teach at Tufts, but the word on the Web is that Ramsey is the author of this handout. Cheeky blighter!🤣

https://www.cs.tufts.edu/comp/105-2017f/readings/ml.pdf

Four Lectures on Standard ML (1989) [pdf]

https://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/cs257/archive/mads-tofte/four-lectures.pdf

#HackerNews #FourLecturesOnStandardML #StandardML #1989 #PDF #ComputerScience #TuftsUniversity

If you are trying to get HOL4 working on a Raspberry Pi, you need to use MoscowML.

Poly/ML native compilation is not really supported for Raspberry Pi, and its bytecode interpreter performs worse than MoscowML's bytecode interpreter anyways.

I learned this after spending a few frustrating days trying to get PolyML to build HOL4, fruitlessly, then gave Mosml a shot (and it worked like a charm).

The things you learn...

#HOL #MoscowML #PolyML #StandardML #RaspberryPi