FRP links

[Jake Brownson]

Big thanks to everyone who came out tonight and let me give my spiel and demo.

Here are some links I referenced. If anyone is interested in talking
more, or has any links I should check out drop me or the list an
email.

Conal Elliott's blog: http://conal.net/blog/
Conal Elliott's talk on FRP w/ video and slides:
http://conal.net/papers/push-pull-frp/
Flapjax: http://www.flapjax-lang.org/index.html
Luna video: http://asana.com/luna/

Also, web version of Akari (dangerously addictive if you like these
kinds of things): http://www.puzzle-light-up.com/

Jake

[Matt Youell]

The system you presented last night reminded me of constraint
programming. There you declare constraints which chain or cascade into
a solution or output. Changes in inputs result in new outputs, etc.

The more I think about it, the more I'm having a problem articulating
in my mind a meaningful difference between the two (constraint and
reactive). Maybe someone can chime in and clarify.

In any case, I've got a nice short book on Constraint Programming you
can borrow if interested. I'll email off-list.

Matt

[Igal Koshevoy]

Many thanks to Jake for his in-depth presentation/demo last night, and
his recently-posted links. He's clearly put a lot of effort into this
project and it was great to see how it all fit together. Also, many
thanks to those that contributed to last night's discussions, these
added much to our understanding and gave our speaker some valuable
insights too.

Tangentially related group business issues:
1. Talks like this are very welcomed -- describing a topic that you've
dived into, the challenges encountered, and ways you've tried
addressing them. I recognize that some may have an easier time
presenting such talks and I'd be glad to see more of them.
2. I know that many of you on the mailing list were interested in last
night's topic. Please be bold and respond to a speaker's emailed
offers to give talks on topics you're interested. This motivates them
and helps them plan, while increasing the chances them covering the
issues you mentioned.

Cheers,

-igal

[Jake Brownson]

Thanks Matt.

I've come across constraint based programming in my searches before
and find the idea very interesting, but I think it is a pretty
different approach. In FRP you're being very explicit about the
manipulations happening to the data, but in my limited understanding
of CBP you're describing what you want your output to look like and
asking the compiler to find the input data that satisfies that. I
think it could be very useful to annotate the edges of a FRP graph
with constraints to allow for error checking, optimization and/or
static analysis, but I think that's very different than CBP.

Jake