PortaCello3 Update [was Re: [cello-devel] scroller]

[Kenny Tilton]

Frank Goenninger wrote:

>Yeah, right - it's not cells actually /moving/ between machines. But:
>If they actually do in a hypothetic solution what would that be good
>for?
>I'm just trying to think the unthinkable. Mobile Agents? Mobile Cells?
>What would be possible applications? 
>
>Coming to my mind:
>- Distributed knowledge representation
>- Fault tolerant systems
>- High-availability on application level: mirroring Cells
>- Load balancing / load optimization
>- Self-organization based apps
>
>Am I going crazy now? ;-) 
>
Too early to tell. :)

You may be right. And anyway, I also understand you are just using 
language more colorfully, always good in a marketing program.

Take the IPC idea you have raised. Sure, something like RoboCup already 
does detailed inter-app communication through a single, two-way pipe 
using some agreed mini-language of virtual soccer. So by one view 
IPCells (if you will) just eliminates the language. Well, that is a nice 
achievement, but on the face of it nothing overwhelming, since little 
parsers are not too hard to create. But sometimes these things turn out 
to have more bang than one would expect given the apparent benefit.

Cells already did that once: I thought they simply ordered complex 
calculations automatically and kept interdependent state 
self-consistent, but the big win I think is that they break applications 
up into a declarative model which decomposes functional complexity 
almost automatically. That is something one could after the fact 
translate into a Cells-free imperative implementation, but could one 
ever get to that end without the crutch of originally developing the 
system under Cells? If not, Cells are not a crutch. And back on topic, 
it is an unexpected (by me anyway) benefit of a nice but prosaic win.

I am thinking now of the ultimate chat room, where folks could shake 
hands. Maybe I have to try out one of these on-line games such as 
Anarchy On-Line.

kt

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