Basic with SNOBOL primitives + ambient assisted living for seniors

[RFO-BASIC]

I received this as an email. I thought that I would pass it on to the development team.

From: Wolfgang Bock anitratech@googlemail.com

Dear Dr. Laughton

(I did not find your bio & simply assume you are related to Dr. Laughton of Feynman - Laughton - Sands, authors of the most entertaining book about physics that I know). As for myself, I am an (old) consultant setting up EU-sponsored projects & then bother the other partners as a partner in same. These typically take 3 years, 7 successes so far.

Now this his here mail tries to address two issues which may sound facetious but are intended to be taken seriously:

1. RFO BASIC being an interpreter, it ought to be possible to extend the language to include some of the powerfrul string handling tricks of SNOBOL4 which also - as you know - is an interpreter. I hope you do not mind if I add a reference, e.g. http://berstis.com/s4ref/howto2.htm. 1.1 The interesting thing about SNOBOL is that the language died before semiconducting memories became both huge and hugely cheap: it was clearly designed for such a contingency. Another reason why it died may have been excessive IPR protection. At any reate, some such code code is now in the public domain. I know I could try to find an university professor to take your code & extend it (& good luck to me) but it somehow seems cool to ask you first.

1.2 What would one do with a SNOBOL interpreter extension: all kinds of interesting things, but my favorite is: fool + better-exploit the Google browser. Plus some things in 2. below.

1. The EU is into a thingie that they call AAL (Ambient-assisted-living) which purports to serve the more or less disabled but at any rate, seriously old set: the idea is to assist them so they can live at home better & longer. One orphan idea here is to improve intellectual stimulus, hence (in part) 1.2 above. INow it is my personal fantasy to equip older - but not yet disabled - people like me with a special radio interphone; special, because strongly connected to the Internet. By virtue of some features derived from 3-D acoustics and video, the interphone would be part of a smart wall including an array of microphones. Many years ago, I wrote a hopeful patent to such effect, which has now expired but does cover the sort of things I want to do. Nowadays, said interphone can probably be built using an Android phone. I include a German article teaching how to build an Androis Internet radio - halfway there. Nothing intellectually dramatic in that article, that design just happens to be neat.

3.What I would like you to consider, is to somehow participate in such an effort. The EU - like the US Government - is a bit cautious about co-financing US parties but in the present situation & putative proposal, that can probably be dealt with.

1. Why 1. is connected with 2.? E.g. the "string-handling-savvy BASIC" of 1. would help write the apps for 2. In fact, you and a few other open-source advocates litterally opened my eyes to the fact that a venture such as 2. above, to succeed, must be open-source at the software tool level - not necessarily at the apps level. Indeed, I am sure that there are lots of more advanced, closed-source approaches to 2. - it is not hard to come to my conclusions. But the cool thing - and the subject of a putative EU-project - is to discover a sound business case for open innovation re. 2. I happen to know whom I could ask about structuring the business ideas - a Californian professor. I also have a target for the funding questions, who is a major open-innovation champion at the EU Commission.

Of course, in case of interest, I would love to call. If no interest, thanks for providing some smart ideas.

Very best

Wolfgang

Wolfgang Bock, Ph.D. Anitra Technologies UG Stuntzstr. 33 D-81677 Munich T +4989 916392

[jMarcS]

Well, I'd be better able to comment if I knew more about SNOBOL. I do know I don't have time for a project this big.

Why SNOBOL?

Some folks really like it, but you have to be a pretty sophisticated programmer to have an opinion about whether SNOBOL pattern-manipulation is better than Perl or Python regular expressions. Somebody must care, since Perl now supports recursive patterns, and there's an extension to Python (SnoPy) that directly supports SNOBOL patterns. My guess is that Dr. Bock is an aficionado from the early days.

Why BASIC, generally?

It's not clear to me if Dr. Bock wants to provide end-users with a programming language as well as a video interphone application, but I suspect it is only the application. So is he looking for someone to first) modify BASIC !and second) write the application(s) as BASIC! program(s)?

You can probably find a lot more developers who either already write in BASIC or are willing to learn it than people who know or want to learn SNOBOL. But the hard part of learning SNOBOL is undoubtedly the pattern-handlilng. Can you expect people who write in BASIC to learn that? They might as well learn SNOBOL. So this question really hinges on exactly what Dr. Bock feels BASIC can not do. If it's a small enough subset of SNOBOL string-handling, it's just an extension to BASIC that should not be hard to add. If it's full SNOBOL capability, use SNOBOL. A quick search suggests that there is a SPITBOL for Android project out there.

But developers these days are far more likely to hop on a project in Python or Ruby (or maybe Haskell) than in BASIC or SNOBOL/SPITBOL.

Why RFO BASIC!, specifically?

Well, Paul * is * an icon in the computing world, a true Hall-of-Famer. But besides that, Dr. Bock says it "must be open-source at the software tool level". BASIC! is, and Paul is just as committed to the concept as he is. I suspect that Dr. Bock's very understandable confusion between Paul Laughton and Robert Leighton (you do know the RF in RFO is for Richard Feynman, right?) adds to his comfort level. We "old-school programmers" gotta stick together. Well, we don't "gotta", but we do share a lot of experiences and attitudes - we "speak the same language". Maybe that language is BASIC.

My advice to Dr. Bock is two-fold. Either:

• get very specific about what extensions to BASIC (or BASIC!) are really needed, or
• consider writing his application(s) in pure SNOBOL/SPITBOL or in Python.

My advice to anyone interested in working with Dr. Bock on his probably-very-ambitious project is to jump in and enjoy it, wherever it may lead.