From tjoccam@crash.cts.com Sun Oct 31 15:49:06 2004
From: Lawrence Dickson <tjoccam@crash.cts.com>
To: IanPage99@aol.com, mdp2@michaelpoole.demon.co.uk, tjoccam@crash.cts.com
Cc: occam-com@ukc.ac.uk
Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2000 09:18:41 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: New language syntax
Message-ID: <200012201718.eBKHIfw05383@crash.cts.com>

Points on getting it accepted (based on my experience)

(1) If it's something new to people they want their hand
held. A packaged solution that gets you to a desired result
is needed. Inmos came close with B008, hardware, code: what
I think was their shortcoming was they didn't "reach for 
the world" and offer occam tools for the host system, so
the "occam world" was automatically (and unnecessarily)
marginalized.

(2) More recent efforts have attacked that problem, but
the beautiful hardware flexibility offered by B008 and
TRAMs is a thing of the past.

(3) The world needs us. System and driver code (the stuff
at asynchronous hardware/software interface) is a 
nightmare and continually getting worse. TRAMs used to
make that easy. 

(4) We can do modules that are hardware-equivalent. Nobody
else can. Go with our strengths.

(5) A C-appearing preprocessor syntax is a convenience. 
A little occam-friendly OS that writes what the rest of
the world calls system or kernel code is a necessity. If
we ride other people's horses we can't solve (3).

(6) The only way to sell it is to develop it and do 
things with it - easily - because otherwise nobody will
believe we can do things with it easily.

Larry Dickson