[Squeak-e] om?

[Mark S. Miller]

At 10:21 PM 1/29/2004  Thursday, Alan Grimes wrote:

>I don't remember reciving any trafick from this list....
>
>I was reminded of the list by Brian Rice in IRC...
>
>When looking at this URL:
>http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-e/2003-February/000027.html
>
>I was struck by the fact that this is ALMOST EXACTLY MY IDEA!!!! =P
>
>See paper at: http://users.rcn.com/alangrimes/UCE/sphere.txt
>
>Which is 2 years older....

Thanks -- I'm always happy to learn of earlier work that's along the same lines. 
At
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-e/2003-February/000028.html

I write my own credit self-correction to my earlier message as follows:
>Oops, I forgot to mention the biggest credit-where-due on this: Udi Shapiro 
>and the use of nested virtual meta-reflective interpreters in a network in 
>Flat Concurrent Prolog. He did indeed reify eval and absorb apply (#4) and 
>he did indeed use source-to-source transformation to simulate 
>meta-interpretation cheaply (#10).
>
>As I read over my description, I think it's all there in Udi's work (except 
>for #9, which is obvious anyway). My message is only new imagery for 
>explaining an old idea. I'm embarrassed. Well, at least the idea I almost 
>stole is a good one. ;)

The work I refer to here is actually 
Safra, M. and Shapiro, E. Y., Meta Interpreters for Real, In Information 
Processing 86, Kugler, H.-J. (ed.), North-Holland, Amsterdam, pp. 271--278, 
1986.
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/context/72525/0
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=58180&dl=ACM&coll=portal

Since I don't yet know Sphere, I can't yet comment on whether or not this 
paper represents almost the same idea 15 years yet earlier.


----------------------------------------
Text by me above is hereby placed in the public domain

        Cheers,
        --MarkM