Re: Meeting Sep 3

[scott...@me.com]

I'm in for Wednesday, September 3rd.

- Scott

On Tuesday, August 12, 2008, at 09:37PM, "Wade" <wade.h...@gmail.com> wrote:
>How about Wed Sep 3 for the next meeting? Would anyone like to
>present something? (or send in your suggestions of things you would
>like to learn about).
>
>
>Wade

[Daniel Gackle]

Sounds good.

[Michael Beauregard]

Same here.

One topic that I've taken an interest in is Clojure, a lisp running on the Java virtual machine that emphasizes functional programming, Java interoperability and concurrency. Not sure if anyone else might share an interest in this new language.

Michael

[scott...@me.com]

I think that's a great idea Mike -- who's going to do a demo? :)

Obviously the big things with Clojure as you mentioned are being purely functional
(or mostly so), concurrency, and Java interop. I'm also interested in the persistent
data structures (persistent like CONS, not like Hibernate) and generic sequences.
Clojure seems to really fill in the gaps in other Lisps in this area. He's also doing
non-hygienic macros in a Lisp-1 which is interesting.

Regards,

- Scott

On Wednesday, August 13, 2008, at 04:50PM, "Michael Beauregard" <mic...@insightfulminds.com> wrote:
>Same here.
>

>One topic that I've taken an interest in is Clojure <http://clojure.org>, a

[Wade]

That's sounds interesting. It kind of meshes with something I have
been looking at lately

http://www.yworks.com/en/index.html

for which there is a Java library. What would one use for a
persistent data store with Clojure?

Wade

On Aug 13, 4:50 pm, "Michael Beauregard" <mich...@insightfulminds.com>
wrote:
> Same here.
>
> One topic that I've taken an interest in is Clojure <http://clojure.org>, a

> lisp running on the Java virtual machine that emphasizes functional
> programming, Java interoperability and concurrency. Not sure if anyone else
> might share an interest in this new language.
>
> Michael
>

> On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 4:11 PM, Daniel Gackle <danielgac...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > Sounds good.
>

> > On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 5:11 PM, <scott.b...@me.com> wrote:
>
> >> I'm in for Wednesday, September 3rd.
>
> >> - Scott
>

> >> On Tuesday, August 12, 2008, at 09:37PM, "Wade" <wade.humen...@gmail.com>

[Daniel Gackle]

I've been following it in the blogs and such, but haven't tried it. It does sound more interesting and more useful than Arc.

Dan

[Michael Beauregard]

By far, IMHO.

[Scott Bell]

Folks,

 

I will be in Kauaʻi from August 31 to September 17, so I won’t be able to make the meeting on

September 3^rd. Alternatively, if everyone was able to make it before or after that date I would

gladly participate. What does next week look like for everyone?

 

Regards,

 

- Scott

[Lance Hanlen]

Is anyone here by any chance interested in biology or medical research?

http://www.littleb.org/index.html

--
_Lance

蓝寺 寒林

Ланс Ханлен

[Daniel Gackle]

I'm away later in September. So if we stick with Wednesdays, our options are Aug 27 (next week) or Oct 1. I can do either of these. Anybody want to go for next week?

By the way, another idea I've been meaning to propose for one of these meetings is to do a bit of emacs hacking. I know that Mike and Derek have been deep into this the last few months, and I'd like to dip my feet in the water - I have a list of things I want to do to improve my toolset.

Dan

On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 1:45 PM, Scott Bell <scott...@me.com> wrote:

[Daniel Gackle]

I saw an article on this a little while ago: http://www.physorg.com/news136022928.html

It included the following statement, which I thought was a pretty good summary for a non-specialist: LISP is famous among computer scientists due to its ability to write code that, in turn, can write code, enabling a programmer to derive new mini-languages.

But I don't know anything about the domain.

Dan

[Lance Hanlen]

Thanks Dan. We have a research group at the UofC medical school that
is very interested in partnering with the Harvard medical school on
this. The Harvard team is in turn very interested in a web GUI for
littleb, and a full 3D simulation environment.

I wonder if a web GUI could be done all in hunchentoot with
parenscript? I know the domain but not lisp, so I would just do a
standard web GUI, unless anyone was interested in working on this? It
may become a paid position at some point if there is enough promise.

Any thoughts?

[Scott Bell]

Lance,

A rich web UI using only Hunchentoot and Parenscript is exactly what Dan and I
are working on presently. It has shown to be a very solid platform for develop-
ing a DSL appropriate for your particular web application. This is in keeping
with the Lisp idiom of building up layers of abstraction in a declarative way.

I get the sense that there are many scientific domain experts working in Lisp,
learning the language could always be an option for you!

Regards,

- Scott

[Lance Hanlen]

I got a great start with Vladimir when we worked on a project last
year, but too many things happened for me to keep up.

My fondest wish is to master the paradigm and develop with you guys,
but I just don't have the time to do this alone.

As a scientific domain this one is unique. Biochemical modeling is
heavily constrained by noisy chaotic complexity that cannot be modeled
mathematically or computationally. This is a very special combination
in scientific research. It is the first time in 20 years of
collaboration that biochemical modeling has moved past graphics and
databases, into real computation. Lisp may be the only way forward for
bioinformatics, and bioinformatics may be the biggest thing that will
happen to lisp.

I am very busy right now but I will help out the medical school. If
anyone here is interested enough to work on this as an interesting
problem in it's own right, I can make sure that the medical school
uses your design, and gives you any available resources now and in the
future.

I have a game development company standing by to do the cell world
simulations in the coming years. That's where I spend most of my time,
but I can make time to learn lisp and contribute to the development,
albeit very slowly for the foreseeable future. I sure can't even think
about learning and doing this by myself now.

But if there was real interest in the community, understand that the
web GUI to littleb is the first phase. Second phase will be an
interface to a 3D gaming world. And whoever is doing this will be able
to design a very high profile technology that will very likely set the
standard for medical computing for a long time, maybe forever.

Thanks for reading this.

[Wade Humeniuk]

Next week might  be OK for me.  I am on holidays next week and may or may not be in town.

As for littleb ......  what would be in a web gui?

W

[Lance Hanlen]

The easiest way for me to explain it is to say that littleb may be the
philosopher's stone for molecular biology; all medical research is
stuck in a rut and this could be the way forward they are all looking
for.

But they can't use it for the same reason it took this long to find.
They don't understand computing, let alone lisp.

To make the connection, the Harvard team needs a way to connect a
graphical user interface to their big machine. It has to be
domain-intuitive, which I can do, but it mainly renders down to
graphics to connect to the computing. I see it as a very simple task
once Hunchentoot and Parenscript are in place (easy for you?) and the
domain knowledge has been specified (easy for me?).

Images that trigger execution on the server, and return images back,
with a little basic client intelligence. (Or a lot, but those are
architectural considerations/opportunities for the future).

The Harvard Medical School team specifically stated what they are
dreaming about: a Dreamweaver for littleb.

--

[Michael Beauregard]

So I'm checking my mail tonight and it doesn't look like the date got resolved. I've been out of town and off the grid for about 3 weeks now so sorry for not chiming in earlier. I won't be able to attend Aug 27 (tomorrow), but should be able to make Sep 3 or most other Wednesdays providing I get some notice to book a babysitter.

Emacs hacking would be fun, but I never really went super deep and am a bit out of practice (though I use emacs full time on the job still). As for driving a Clojure demo, I'd need some time to prepare and get ramped up. Not sure I have enough cycles to do much before hand unfortunately.

[Daniel Gackle]

I'd prefer to wait till Scott gets back, which would mean Sept 24, I guess, or Oct 1.

[Wade]

Sept 24th then for everyone? Who will present? Or.... perhaps a few
people could try out some things and present a few working examples.
I have not used it (and would have to learn some Java) but perhaps I
can give it a try.

Wade