Jonte Deakin year 12 semester 2 IT assignment

This is the conclusion of the project. As I write this I have completely finished the language to where I wanted it to be. I am very happy with how it turned out. I am currently trying to describe the project mathematically and write a proof that the non-deterministic execution environment that I wrote does in fact halt.  It was fun to work on a long-form project like this, I have never done something as massive as this before and it was cool to do. I think I got to 1.2k lines which doesn't sound like much but it is 1.2k lines of some serious thinking. Not a lot of filler code in the project. On that note I did really have to think hard creating this, there were a lot of algorithms that I didn't have the time to read about and learn so I had to write them myself. It was challenging and very fun.  I think at the start of this project I didn't really have the strongest grasp on the areas I was talking about, but as time has gone on, especially lately, I have come to really un...

This week I made the semantics checkers. Normally when I write programming languages and code generally, I don't really care about errors or anything like that. This is the first time I have ever written any semantics checking and I feel proud of myself for doing it. My programming language feels so much more professional with compilation errors and everything like that. It is cool and I am having fun.  I did most of that stuff Monday and Tuesday of last week. I then tried to start working on the presentation and I wanted to write an example of how the non-determinism worked. Although the first example I tried pointed out the glaring flaw in my initial idea. Basically, the problem is that we rely on how fast something runs to delete branches and the like. As we have tried to sidestep the halting problem, we are making guesses that aren't true. The other way you could think about the problem is that a function running forever and a function running normally is indistinguishable ...

I started work on the assignment again today. I have had lots of funky ideas about where I could take the project but I have realized that I don't have enough time and I am this close to finishing school so I'm going to stick to the original plan and finish it quickly. All the wack stuff I've been thinking about can be done in like the 5 month holiday I have before uni starts, and presumably then as well. So I did this and got the lexer, parser and executer done to handle ml algebraic data types. The only thing I have to finish is the semantics checking stuff which I imagine might be a bit of a hassle but that's pretty much it. Although I do want to keep it simple I do have some ideas for optional stuff that I can do if I have the time before the presentation. That logic programming thing non-deterministic programming idea I had makes more sense the longer I think about it.  I have simplified the type definitions a fair bit so it would be good to enforce recursive types...

 I have not worked on my assignment this week. I have been busy with physics and a new job thing I'm doing. I think I will probably just stick to the original plan, with the ml Esque algebra and the simple type checker. This is because I am new to type checkers so I do want to keep it simple. The type idea I had before is a good one but I don't know if I will have the time to fully develop it before the assignment is due. I think I will have to work through this fairly quick so I'll stick to the original plan.  I will continue to develop the idea in my own time though, just for fun. 

I took a break from I.T for a bit in the last week. I am trying to catch up on other assignments I have missed.  Although one thing I have been doing in my off hours is learning coq, and I think I understand structural recursion. It is basically what I tried to do before except sightly better described and works. So I think I'll probably just implement that. It seems to be pretty elegant.