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paulfitz / cosmicos

Sending the lambda calculus into deep space
https://cosmicos.github.io/
GNU General Public License v2.0
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Added zero to initial counting example #2

Closed alanfwilliams closed 10 years ago

alanfwilliams commented 10 years ago

Counting from zero seems like a good idea to me. This gives a chance to add zero to examples later on, including the MUD, i.e. having zero of some object. If you want me to further expand this idea to other parts of the message, so we can do it as one big commit rather than a bunch of little ones, I will gladly do so.

paulfitz commented 10 years ago

Thanks @aw1231! I'd be interested in any ideas you have to expand on the message, big or small.

alanfwilliams commented 10 years ago

Sorry for the delay, I was waiting until I could get my hands on a copy of Lincos. I find the whole idea very intriguing. One thing I would like to work on is the addition of real numbers and other mathy kinds of stuff. However, I am open to working on any ideas you might have. Alan

paulfitz commented 10 years ago

@aw1231 did you get a copy? Lincos can be hard to get a hold of. Real numbers would definitely be useful. I'd be excited to be able to express simple physical simulations, for example.

For physical simulations, I have a hankering to borrow from Wisdom and Sussman's approach to mechanics http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/6946/index.html - but that would be way way down the road. Don't need anything remotely that complex yet.

alanfwilliams commented 10 years ago

I managed to get a photocopy of the parts that I find interesting, mainly the math parts. Considering we do have logic gates implemented within cosmicos, I could work on implementing a softcore (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_microprocessor) version of a FPU (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating-point_unit). Would that be something that I could contribute? Or do you have something else in mind?

paulfitz commented 10 years ago

If that speaks to you, go for it. More circuitry would be fine. It could be awkward, though, to talk about some aspects of real numbers via finite circuitry. It'd be useful to introduce basic real arithmetic and other operations, by example or by definition, as done for integers. It'd be super neat to mention that there are more reals than integers and get Cantor's diagonalisation in there.