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Grand mothers kitchen is nevertheless the best, who knows? (Was: Antique Programming Style versus Modern Programming Style [SWI-Prolog])

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Disclaimer: Below was just a little rant, pushing
my modernization agenda, like elsewhere. But
this is just an opinion.

Maybe grand mothers kitchen is nevertheless
the best, who knows?

Mild Shock schrieb:
> Hi,
> 
> I just double checked OpenJDK, it has a few macros
> for ptrace meta data, but otherwise I don’t find so
> many macros. The problem is SWI-Prolog has a very
> antique programming style. It has an over use of macros.
> 
> Macros have a lot of drawbacks. Although you can do:
> 
> #define SQUARE(x) ((x) * (x))
> 
> /* makes this not behave as expected */
> int z = SQUARE(x++); // expands to (x++ * x++) —
>                       // side effects happen twice! ❌
> 
> In most modern C and C++ compilers you can do,
> i.e. use the “inline” keyword:
> 
> inline int square(int x) {
>    return x * x;
> }
> 
> /* lets this behave as expected */
> int z = square(x++); // x++ evaluated once ✔
> 
> This avoids all the classic macro pitfalls. So I wouldn’t
> touch Knowledge bases, as long as there is a macro hell.
> After getting rid of macros, yes, things are fairly
> 
> straight forward.
> 
> Bye
> 
> Mild Shock schrieb:
>> Hi,
>>
>> They had a bunny-shaped topiary in front
>> of their offices, must have been swimming
>> in money, General Magic didn't predict the Future:
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4lqz2OofL0
>>
>> Now, things don't look exactly how they evisioned.
>>
>> Bye
>>
>> Mild Shock schrieb:
>>>
>>> Another solution would be to dismiss the whole Java
>>> ClassLoader thing as humbug, and not strive for a
>>> Knowlegebase abstraction, and create workers via some
>>> operating system fork().
>>>
>>> This might perfectly well work as well. It only
>>> breaks down if you want to embed and integrate
>>> your “workers”, into systems that have something like
>>> this Java ClassLoader notion.
>>>
>>> Either way, “workers” provide a nice new notion
>>> besides engines, which was never covered by Papers
>>> of Paul Tarau and the like, and might not have
>>> existed in older Prolog systems. Because
>>>
>>> old papers had a different ontology: Places,
>>> Sandbox, etc.. workers were simply not on the radar.
>>> The data isolation allows for non-cooperative
>>> parallelism among workers, despite the notion of an
>>>
>>> engine is rather cooperative. Workers got momentum
>>> with Web 2.0 and early process isolation of browser
>>> tabs in 2008 when Chrome debuted. Just after that
>>> in 2010 they were introduced as part of HTML5 for
>>>
>>> thread isolation inside a browser tab.
>>>
>>> See for yourself:
>>>
>>> Jinni: Intelligent Mobile Agent Programming
>>> at the Intersection of Java and Prolog
>>> https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Paul-Tarau/publication/2762429
>>>
>>> Mild Shock schrieb:
>>>> If SWI-Prolog would be rewritten in C++ maybe a GLOBAL_LD
>>>> wouldn’t be needed at all. You could make Knowledgebase
>>>> and Engine classes, the C++ compiler would optimize for
>>>>
>>>> you passing around GD or LD in the form of a “this”, and
>>>> a method inside an Engine, could access a Knowledge base,
>>>> by “this->KB” or simply “KB”. C++ would be even less
>>>> annoying than Java, since you can do deferred mixin:
>>>>
>>>> class Person {
>>>>     [...]
>>>> }
>>>>
>>>> And later:
>>>>
>>>> void Person::Print() {
>>>>     [...]
>>>> }
>>>>
>>>> Because I don’t have deferred mixin in Java, my own
>>>> modularization looks extremly messy, passing around a
>>>> parameter explicitly, hoping that the usual register
>>>> file optimization of a Java compiler eliminates
>>>>
>>>> most parameter passing. But my C++ knowledge is very
>>>> limited, so I don’t know whether a PhD in Macro defs
>>>> was the better solution. Was there never a C++
>>>>
>>>> implemenation of SWI-Prolog ?
>>>>
>>>> Mild Shock schrieb:
>>>>>
>>>>>  > The required changes could be fairly limited.
>>>>>
>>>>> I don’t know. You never know before you did it.
>>>>> With the current design you might end up in a
>>>>> Münchhausen scenario, trying to defy gravity by
>>>>> pulling your own hair. It seems there is a global switch
>>>>>
>>>>> which engine is active? I don’t understand, isn’t
>>>>> SWI-Prolog able to run truely concurrently on a
>>>>> multi-core machine. Because such things, wouldn’t
>>>>> work for threads that distribute themselves over cores.
>>>>>
>>>>> I saw an L_THREAD lock somewhere?
>>>>>
>>>>> #define GET_LD      PL_local_data_t *__PL_ld = GLOBAL_LD;
>>>>>
>>>>> In the “worker” scenario, a “worker” can typically grab
>>>>> a CPU core all for himself, and for its knowledge and
>>>>> for all the engines that work over this knowlegde base.
>>>>> Thats the beauty of JavaScript
>>>>>
>>>>> isolation through “workers”, and it is also used in
>>>>> the Ciao Playground. Its very multi core friendly, a
>>>>> “worker” can also have its own garbage collection etc…
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
> 

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    Re: What about allowing numbers 1e19, etc.. (Re: Novacore is a Prolog profile that explores various relaxations) Mild Shock <janburse@fastmail.fm> - 2025-03-21 19:29 +0100
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  How difficult is a Knowledbase notion? (Was: Novacore is a Prolog profile that explores various relaxations) Mild Shock <janburse@fastmail.fm> - 2025-07-02 09:33 +0200
    C++ programming or a PhD in Macro defs (Was: How difficult is a Knowledbase notion?) Mild Shock <janburse@fastmail.fm> - 2025-07-02 09:35 +0200
      Workers never had the blessing of Paul Tarau [Prolog missed Web 2.0] (Was: C++ programming or a PhD in Macro defs) Mild Shock <janburse@fastmail.fm> - 2025-07-02 09:49 +0200
        General Magic didn't predict the Future (Was: Workers never had the blessing of Paul Tarau [Prolog missed Web 2.0]) Mild Shock <janburse@fastmail.fm> - 2025-07-02 10:07 +0200
          Antique Programming Style versus Modern Programming Style [SWI-Prolog] (Was: Workers never had the blessing of Paul Tarau [Prolog missed Web 2.0]) Mild Shock <janburse@fastmail.fm> - 2025-07-02 15:54 +0200
            Grand mothers kitchen is nevertheless the best, who knows? (Was: Antique Programming Style versus Modern Programming Style [SWI-Prolog]) Mild Shock <janburse@fastmail.fm> - 2025-07-02 16:06 +0200

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