[clean-list] call for MSc research question

[Marco Kesseler]

Arjen van Weelden wrote:
> It is obviously possible to implement functional languages on .Net, 
> but whether it is effective? It think that you need a better 
> specification of "effective" before you start your research. (I don't 
> think that you are allowed to publish benchmark results about .Net, 
> but maybe they have changed the license.)

Well, I found this one:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnnetdep/html/redisteula.asp

I imagine that the "obligation" to publish the sources is prohibitive 
for commercial parties, but not necessarily for a researcher.

Now, whether this is an "obligation" that you have to adhere to is 
rather food for though for lawyers and judges (and common sense), than 
merely a "fact" that exists because Microsoft has written it down.

"Freedom of speech" is quite a fundamental thing, you know.

regards,
Marco

>
> Developing you own compiler that generates .Net code for graph 
> reduction from Clean source code might take a lot of time. Why not 
> collaborate with the person that developed CleanJ (he reuses the Clean 
> compiler until the ABC code level)? Using F# as the working language 
> might also make it easier.
>
> kind regards,
>     Arjen
>
> Jigang Sun wrote:
>> I am making MSc project specification. I am thinking of the research 
>> question. Currently my supervisor and other reseach staff suggest it 
>> as "Is the .Net CLR /Common Type System/C# an effective platform for 
>> implementing functional languages?".
>> I think implementing functional language on .Net is for portability 
>> purpose even if it is not efficient to support functional language. 
>> Just like popular machine(I think it is of Von Neumann architecture) 
>> is no good platform for functional language(I heard sombody ever 
>> suggested to make lambda calculus machine) but on which the 
>> lfunctional anguage has to be realised because of its popularity. The 
>> question whether .NET CLR/C#/Common Type System is an efficiency 
>> platform for functional language could lead to a good thinking of 
>> extension to .Net, ideally this question would be perfect if it is 
>> followed by the extension work. which probably Microsoft reseachers 
>> must have been on, because F# has been released. I could not do 
>> better than them or it is not practical for me to make an functional 
>> extension to .Net 2.0 or  .Net 3.0.
>>
>> I wonder if I could borrow an idea from F# to make an experimental 
>> extension to Clean so that inside Clean programmer can use common 
>> .Net library and a .Net language like C# also share Clean library as 
>> well.
>>
>> Please help me with Outline or Objectives of the specification below 
>> to reflect the light of research qestion.
>>
>> Thanks. Jigang
>>
>> My Course: Information Technology with Oracle stream
>>
>> Draft specification
>>
>>  Project Title: Subset of Clean implementation on .NET
>>
>> Research Question :         Is the .Net CLR /Common Type System/C# an 
>> effective platform for implementing functional languages?
>>
>> Outline (Overview) : This project will investigate the theoretical 
>> and practical issues involved in implementing functional programming 
>> languages on the .Net platform, and, as part of the practical 
>> investigation, will provide an implementation of a subset of the 
>> (lazy, pure) functional language Clean.  A complete implementation of 
>> Clean's hybrid type system will not be attempted.  C# is chosen as 
>> working language.
>>
>> Objectives (The Project will) : . To further investigate the back end 
>> paradigm for functional languages and to understand the 
>> implementation issues that are distinct from imperative or object 
>> oriented languages; . To identify a suitable subset of Clean; . To 
>> choose methods for pattern matching, recursive function, graph 
>> reduction, type checking, strictness analysis; . Design test cases; . 
>> To develop a working compiler or interpreter for a subset of the 
>> Clean programming language.
>>
>> Relationship to Course (and Stream) : This project is certainly 
>> unusual for a conversion MSc in Information Technology. It is of 
>> intrinsic value and demonstrates how well I have adopted and mastered 
>> IT principles and software development. The topic is my interest. The 
>> project would have fitted better with former Software Development 
>> stream of PgDIT, on which I originally planned to enrol. The Oracle 
>> stream is currently the best fit.
>>
>> Resources (including Reading List) : http://www.cs.ru.nl/~clean/  The 
>> language report, basic methods behind current Clean IDE, historical 
>> achievements, etc.
>>
>> Modern Compiler Implementation in Java, 2nd Edition, Andrew W. Appel, 
>> Princeton University, New Jersey
>>
>> Publications and proceedings of the Association  for Computing 
>> Machinery Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (SIGPLAN)
>>
>> http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~as/fpcourse/fpcourse.html
>>
>> Marking Scheme : Introduction 5% Literature Review   20% Design 25% 
>> Implementation  25% Testing  10% Discussion (future work etc) 5% 
>> Critical evaluation 10%
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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