Research Project on OpenQuark

[Robin Salkeld]

Hello all,

I will be starting a PhD in Computer Science this September, in the
area of Programming Languages and Software Development Tools, and I am
investigating the possibility of doing a combined academic/industrial
project involving OpenQuark, as I've always loved the system and
wanted to see it continue to grow and find more users.

Having programmed a fair bit in CAL, and having watched this group for
a while now, I'm curious to find out what improvements and/or
additions to the language and platform you all would find most
attractive. I have a number of ideas in mind, but I'd love to see
what's on everyone else's wish lists. :)

Thanks very much!

Robin

[Tom Davies]

Hi Robin,

I did a short talk on CAL to my local (Sydney) fp interest group last
week, and was hard put to explain just why I like this orphaned
language so much. I don't think I really got across just what a
quality tool it is, and how nice it feels to use.

Possible improvements:

- some type system extensions -- I'm not really certain which would be
most useful. The restriction I probably come across most, when
translating Haskell to CAL is the lack of overlapping instances, but
perhaps more interesting would be to install (say) Daan Leijen's HMF?

- I've been interested in the idea of making the CAL runtime and its
generated source buildable under GWT, to allow CAL to run on
Javascript.

Tom

[Tom Davies]

And most important, rename 'anonymousBind' to 'then' :-)