Annonce March 2018

annonce@lrde.epita.fr

2 participants
4 discussions

New journal publication: Lisp, Jazz, Aikido
by Didier Verna 12 Apr '18

12 Apr '18

Hello, I'm happy to announce the upcoming publication of my essay entitled Lisp, Jazz, Aikido, to appear in Volume 2 Issue 3 of the Art, Science and Engineering of Programming journal, in April 2018. The abstract is given below. The relation between Science (what we can explain) and Art (what we can't) has long been acknowledged and while every science contains an artistic part, every art form also needs a bit of science. Among all scientific disciplines, programming holds a special place for two reasons. First, the artistic part is not only undeniable but also essential. Second, and much like in a purely artistic discipline, the act of programming is driven partly by the notion of aesthetics: the pleasure we have in creating beautiful things. Eventhough the importance of aesthetics in the act of programming is now unquestioned, not much has been written on the subject. The field called "psychology of programming" focuses on the cognitive aspects of the activity, with the goal of improving the productivity of the programmers. Very few programmers have written about their thought process while programming either, and even fewer on their concern for aesthetics, and the impact it has on their activity. I can see three reasons for this. First, it may be frightening to do so. Reflecting on our aesthetic sensitivities involves thinking about our own emotions, and not everyone is ready or willing to perform that kind of introspection. Second, this introspection needs to be very deep, as our aesthetic sensitivities are extremely personal. Third, this introspection also needs to be very broad, as our aesthetic sensitivities affect every part of our lives. The purpose of this essay is to shed some new light on the art of programming by answering questions such as what makes us like or dislike such or such language or paradigm, or why do we shape our programs the way we do, all of this from the angle of aesthetics. Starting from the assumption that aesthetics is an inherently transversal concern, it should be possible for every programmer to find the same aesthetic driving force in every creative activity they undertake, not just programming, and in doing so, get deeper insight on why and how they do things the way they do. On the other hand, because our aesthetic sensitivities are so personal, all we can really do is relate our own experiences and share it with others, in the hope that it will inspire them to do the same. It is certainly an important purpose of this essay. My personal life has been revolving around three major creative activities, of equal importance: programming in Lisp, playing Jazz music and practicing Aikido. But why so many of them, why so different ones, and why these specifically? By introspecting my personal aesthetic sensitivities, I eventually realized that my tastes in the scientific, artistic and physical domains are all motivated by the same driving forces, hence unifying Lisp, Jazz and Aikido as three expressions of a single essence, not so different after all. In doing so, I gained considerable insight on my own psychology of programming, perhaps common to most lispers, perhaps also common to other programming communities. But that is for the reader to decide... -- Resistance is futile. You will be jazzimilated. Lisp, Jazz, Aïkido: http://www.didierverna.info

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Vcsn 2.7 is released!
by Akim Demaille 29 Mar '18

29 Mar '18

We are happy to announce the release of Vcsn 2.7! As most of our efforts are currently on Vcsn 3, this is mostly a bug fix release, with improvements in the documentation based on user feedback. For more information see the detailed news below. Release page: https://vcsn.lrde.epita.fr/Vcsn2.7 Tarball: https://www.lrde.epita.fr/dload/vcsn/2.7/vcsn-2.7.tar.xz Home page: https://vcsn.lrde.epita.fr The various packages (Arch, Debian, Docker, MacPorts, etc.) will appear soon. ## New features ### Improved compatibility between single- and multitape expressions The automatic promotion from single-tape to multitape is more general. For instance (| separates tapes and @ denotes composition): In [2]: c = vcsn.context('lat<lan, lan>, b') In [3]: c.expression('a') Out[3]: a|a In [4]: c.expression('a*b* @ (ab)*') Out[4]: (a|a)*(b|b)*@((a|a)(b|b))* In [5]: c.expression('a*b* @ (ab)*').shortest(10) Out[5]: \e|\e + ab|ab ### vcsn doc is a new tool Run `vcsn doc automaton.determinize`, or `vcsn doc Automata`, etc. The special shortcuts `vcsn doc` opens the Read-me-first notebook, and `vcsn doc index` leads to Algorithms, the page that lists the existing documentation of algorithms (`automata.determinize`, etc.). ### Compressed efsm files Vcsn can read efsm files compressed with bzip2 and xz. In some extreme cases, the xz-compressed efsm file was reduced to 5% of the original size. The files for the sms2fr demo are now compressed with xz. ### vcsn score has several new options The command `vcsn score` benchmarks Vcsn. Its output can be processed with `vcsn score-compare` to see the trends in performances between versions. Benchmarks are now numbered, to give a hint of the progress: $ vcsn score vcsn version: 2.6-085-g6dcae17ef 1/116 0.25s : a.is_proper() # a = "", 1000000x 2/116 0.11s : b.format("text") # b = [abc] -> B, 100000x 3/116 0.35s : b.expression(e) # e = [ab]{20000}, 1000x ... 115/116 0.75s : a.weight_series() # a = std(a{12000}+<1>[b-z]{12000}), c = [a-z] -> Nmin, 200x 116/116 0.89s : a.weight_series() # a = std([a-z]{200}), c = [a-z] -> Z, 10x The new option `-o`/`--output` allows to specify the output file name. Better yet: option `-d`/`--dir` specifies the directory in which the score file is saved; its name will be forged from `git describe`, something like `v2.5-050-g01dbf326`. Such names are interpreted by `vcsn score-compare` to relate the benches to the git commit title. Both features need that you run these commands from a git repository of Vcsn. Option `-j`/`--job` allows to run the benchmarks concurrently. This can be very useful to "warm" vcsn (have it compile the needed algorithms), or to get a nice approximation of the actual benches, however, sticking to a single bench at a time is recommended to get faithful measurements. Option `-l`/`--list` lists the benches without running them. Option `-s`/`--sort` sorts the benchmarks before running them. ### Documentation Several errors were fixed. The page `expression.compose.ipynb` is new. ### Examples of C++ The directories `tests/demo` and `tests/benchmarks` contain more examples using the Vcsn C++ library. ## Bug fixes ### Incorrect order for 8bit characters Calling `compare` on labels would lead to surprising results with 8bit characters (seen as negative ints). This resulted in the incorrect display of the expression `[\x01-\xfe]` as `[\x80-\xfe] + [\x01-\x7f]`. Both are fixed, and 1 is less than 254 again.

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Accepted paper at ELS 2018
by Didier Verna 20 Mar '18

20 Mar '18

Greetings, I'm pleased to announce that my paper entitled "Method Combinators" has been accepted to the next European Lisp Symposium, April 16-17, Marbella, Spain. Please find the abstract below. Method Combinators In traditional object-oriented languages, the dynamic dispatch algorithm is hardwired: for every polymorphic call, only the most specific method is used. CLOS, the Common Lisp Object System, goes beyond the traditional approach by providing an abstraction known as "method combinations": when several methods are applicable, it is possible to select several of them, decide in which order they will be called and how to combine their results, essentially making the dynamic dispatch algorithm user-programmable. Although a powerful abstraction, method combinations are under-specified in the Common Lisp standard, and the MOP, the Meta-Object Protocol underlying many implementations of CLOS, worsens the situation by either contradicting it or providing unclear protocols. As a consequence, too much freedom is granted to conforming implementations, the exact or intended behavior of method combinations is unclear and not necessarily coherent with the rest of CLOS. In this paper, we provide a detailed analysis of the problems posed by method combinations, the consequences of their lack of proper specification in one particular implementation, and a MOP-based extension called "method combinators", aiming at correcting these problems and possibly offer new functionality. -- Resistance is futile. You will be jazzimilated. Lisp, Jazz, Aïkido: http://www.didierverna.info

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[CfPart] European Lisp Symposium 2018, 16-17 April, Marbella, Spain
by Didier Verna 14 Mar '18

14 Mar '18

ELS'18 - 11th European Lisp Symposium Centro Cultural Cortijo de Miraflores Marbella, Málaga Spain April 16-17 2018 Sponsored by Brunner Software GmbH, Franz Inc., LispWorks Ltd., and EPITA http://www.european-lisp-symposium.org/ Recent news: - Invited speakers announced (see below) - Registration open. Don't miss the March 25 deadline for the early bird discount! The purpose of the European Lisp Symposium is to provide a forum for the discussion and dissemination of all aspects of design, implementation and application of any of the Lisp and Lisp-inspired dialects, including Common Lisp, Scheme, Emacs Lisp, AutoLisp, ISLISP, Dylan, Clojure, ACL2, ECMAScript, Racket, SKILL, Hop and so on. We encourage everyone interested in Lisp to participate. Keynote speakers: - Vsevolod Domkin -- Lisp in a Startup: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - R. Matthew Emerson -- This Old Lisp (a look at Clozure CL) Important dates: - 25 Mar 2018 Early registration deadline - 16-17 Apr 2018 Symposium Programme chair: David Cooper, Genworks Intl., USA Local chairs: Andrew Lawson, Ravenpack, Spain Programme committee: Andy Wingo, Igalia, Spain Christophe Rhodes, Goldsmiths University, UK Christopher Wellons Null Program Canada Irène Durand, LaBRI, Université de Bordeaux, France Julian Padget, University of Bath, UK Ludovic Courtès, Inria, France Michael Sperber, DeinProgramm, Germany Nicolas Neuss, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany Olin Shivers Northeastern University USA Philipp Marek, Austria Robert Strandh, LaBRI, Université de Bordeaux, France Sacha Chua Living an Awesome Life Canada Scott McKay, Future Fuel, USA Search Keywords: #els2018, ELS 2018, ELS '18, European Lisp Symposium 2018, European Lisp Symposium '18, 10th ELS, 10th European Lisp Symposium, European Lisp Conference 2018, European Lisp Conference '18 -- Resistance is futile. You will be jazzimilated. Lisp, Jazz, Aïkido: http://www.didierverna.info

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Annonce March 2018