[OT] Eternal programming

[Ronald Legere]

If I were going to do that, I think I would use Scheme.. the syntax is very
simple, and if you use only core language constructs
(cons/car/cdr/define/cond and a few others.. maybe definemacro too. ) you
will have writen your code in a very easy to implement language (almost
everyone writes a scheme interpreter at some point <* grin *> )
  Alternatives? Perhaps lambda calc with minimal extensions.. but then again
thats just scheme :)
  Cheers!

"Roman Suzi" <rnd at onego.ru> wrote in message
news:mailman.994519931.6264.python-list at python.org...
> On Sat, 7 Jul 2001, Michal Wallace wrote:
>
> >On Sat, 7 Jul 2001, Roman Suzi wrote:
> >
> >> I want to be 100% sure that some things I use today will stay forever.
> >> My main concerns are:
> >
> >Hey Roman,
> >
> >You've got an interesting idea here.. But I'm not sure I understand
> >the problem it's meant to address. If you're worried about your code
> >suddenly ceasing to work, of course you know that code doesn't break
> >unless you change things. A pyhon 0.1 script would work just fine
> >today if you had python 0.1 installed.
>
> No... Probably you have not understood.
>
> Lets imagine you want to run a program 300 years from now. C compiler no
> longer exists. Intel hardware sells no longer. No weird MS Word
> files. Python 123.3.4 with almost anything changed compared with version
> 1.5.2 ;-)
>
> What is left:
>
> Data storage, 8 bit bytes, latin letters, 10 digits, some computers with
> some formal programming languages, and some programmers ;-) who are
> capable to program very simple core interpreter in the language they will
> have at hands. (Even mathematicians will be enough).
>
> So, after they program core interpreter according to specs, they will have
> all Eternal software ready to run!
>
> What I half-jokingly proposed is "do it yourself" core interpreter which
> could interprete code written in some simple code, able to evolve like
> Forth does.
>
> AFAIK, there is nothing similar to Eternal apart from Turing machine or
> basic math notation.
>
> This way, the portability is utmost: you write simple core interpreter (~
> RISC-processor) and you can run software!
>
> And you have NO troubles of getting 300 years old hardware, CPU specs,
> etc, etc - only data stored in 8-bit bytes + the only informal piece
> missing: interpreter.
>
> Can you see the root of the idea now?
>
> Of course, only things of historical value will be done in Eternal:
> * JPEG->ASCII convertor
> * bzip2 decompressor
> and so on.
>
> Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
> --
> _/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
> _/ Saturday, July 07, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
> _/ "OK, I'm weird! But I'm saving up to become eccentric." _/
>
>