Re: Cells compared to Flow-Based Programming

FB> FBP is very different:

from what you describe it's different only terminologically..

FB> When developing applications, you start with defining information
FB> packets (IP). In Lisp an IP could be a hashtable or any other Lisp
FB> object.

so IP is just a fancy way to say "any object"? maybe it matter for
distributed
implementations, where IPs have to be serializable

FB> Then you define some processes and interconnect them. A process has
FB> inputs and outputs for processing IPs. The process itself is a program,
FB> with local storage. A process can be instantiated multiple times and
FB> can be configured with configuration IPs (there are preemptive and
FB> cooperative multitasking implementations).

in Cells terminology, process is model (class), process instance is an
object,
interconnect is synapse.

FB> The main motivation of FBP is to reuse stable and tested processes for
FB> many applications.

so is OOP, and articles you've linked say that OOP is quite related to FBP

FB> I think Cells is more fine granular: there are not a few connected
black
FB> boxes, but a network of connected values.

in other words, Cells doesn't hide guts of processes from you, right?

FB> better, maybe this depends on the application. But I think every Cells
FB> network can be transformed to a FBP-like network, but the other
FB> direction would be more difficult, so FBP may be a more general
FB> concept.

for my untrained eye Cells seems to be like a particular implementation of
FBP concepts. can you show an example what general FBP can do
but Cells can't?


.

Relevant Pages

  • Cells compared to Flow-Based Programming
    ... Flow-Based Concepts (FBP), compare it to Cells and what we can learn from ... any other Lisp object. ... Cells network can be transformed to a FBP-like network, ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: Cells compared to Flow-Based Programming
    ... Flow-Based Concepts (FBP), compare it to Cells and what we can learn from ... any other Lisp object. ... connections are explicit, but the IP concept doesn't allow to connect one ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: Cells compared to Flow-Based Programming
    ... In Lisp an IP could be a hashtable or any other Lisp ... and articles you've linked say that OOP is quite related to FBP ...  FB> I think Cells is more fine granular: there are not a few connected ... Dru you're the chef, whenever you get orders prepare the food ordered. ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: Cells compared to Flow-Based Programming
    ... In Lisp an IP could be a hashtable or any other Lisp ... and articles you've linked say that OOP is quite related to FBP ... FB> I think Cells is more fine granular: there are not a few connected ... Dru you're the chef, whenever you get orders prepare the food ordered. ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: Cells compared to Flow-Based Programming
    ... just as a spreadsheet author thinks about only how to compute the cell in front of them but then has to write one rule for all time and all circumstances. ... FBP sounds as if one thinks about a pipeline of processing and transformations one wants for state. ... But the IBM folks report the same high productivity Cells users enjoy, so perhaps the key is exactly what Brooks identified: decomposing the complexity of the the interdependence of large numbers of kinds of state. ... Different instances of the same class get different rules for the same slot, so these rules are not super-reusable abstracted functions, they are very specific hard-coded little value generators, often closures over values that further tailor their output. ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)