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

[mjsilva697@earthlink.net (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/
> To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr  Archives:
> http://caml.inria.fr
> -------------------
> 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