[Sussex] Challenge

[Mark Harrison]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Geoff Teale" <Geoff.Teale at claybrook.co.uk>
To: <sussex at mailman.lug.org.uk>
Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2003 8:42 AM
Subject: RE: [Sussex] Challenge
>
> 1, Developer a new data type based on multi-part representation of floating
> point variables and then develop all the FLOP's on top of them.  This is
> viable, but deeply inefficient.  I would generally consider that if you are
> reimplimenting hardware functions in software then you're going to have to
> give me a heck of a good reason why or I'm going to suspect you are hanging
> a bag on the side of the hardware platform  - a pretty major step.
>
> 2, Allow the language to resolve the equations, this is not valid because it
> still results in the problem in representing 0.1 in binary (in the hardware)
> using IEEE-754.

3: Use a language that already has such a data type, such as Haskell, Hugs,
Orwell, Miranda, OBJ3, or (maybe - I haven't checked) Clean.

These languages were all designed for and by the mathematical community, and as
you know, my degree's in Mathematics and Computation, so inevitably that's what
I'm used to.

I realise that most of you guys probably program in C / Perl / Python etc., but,
genuinely, I've probably written more code in my life in languages like these
than I have in C, and certainly more than in VB, where I have written ONE
program in my life :-)

In fact, as I check my PC today, the two development languages I have installed
are Hugs and Clean....

Clean is way sexy, though I may be biased by virtue of the fact that I'm fishing
for a grant from Phillips, to do some work on rules inference engines for Home
Automation in Clean, jointly with the Universtity of Eindhoven :-)

Regards,

Mark