[CCC DEV] COncurrency.cc and GSOC

[Matt Jadud]

Hi Dave,

On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 11:30 AM, Dave Gilmore <gilmorenator at gmail.com> wrote:
> Can you let me know if there is still scope to do this or if there are any
> other projects that might be of interest?
> I liked the look on the Go to TVM/occam compilation / translation, The
> Better GUI for Transterpreter as I've used Arduino and
> processing extensively and the RCX port
> I've already spoken with Adam Sampson who I meet a few weeks back and he
> showed me some of the concurrency stuff running on the Arduino
> He suggested I send a message to the mailing list as you guys are better
> positioned to answer my questions,

I apologize if the last two weeks of radio silence were too long.
We're slammed as we finish up the semester here.

I can think of a few things that would be useful. Each depends on what
kind of things you'd like to work on.

1. We could get you an Arduino, and you could focus on library-level
support and documentation/writing. For example, we're interested in
expanding the library (and the book) so that we have good,
step-by-step introductions to not only all of the language, but also a
variety of task-oriented activities. For example, we should have a
library process for controlling DC motors, or ...

This is occam-pi work and writing. You get your name in/on a book,
though, if you contribute meaningfully in that space.

2. You could dive in and help us get the JEdit IDE up-to-speed.
Specifically, Christian broke things as he refactored/rearranged it to
make it easier to add new targets, etc. By "broke" I mean that he did
the things that were necessary to go from the pile-o-spaghetti that we
had to something manageable for the future. Now, we have some work to
do to get the Arduino fully supported (serial doesn't come back at the
moment---we need to plug our terminal window back in), Windows and
Linux work need to be done (should be minor?), and NXT will join us
soon, we hope.

This is Java work.

3. I've asked the Arduino team if they'd consider letting us put our
tools under their IDE. They're not keen on distributing our tools with
the IDE (yet! someday, they will beg us to join them! bwahahah!), but
they are certainly willing to accept patches that make it easier for
us to integrate our tools without forking their project. This would
benefit both the Arduino community and us, I think. However, I'd
welcome input from the team here.

Again, this is Java effort. However, it is likely much higher impact,
as any work that makes it easier to plug tools into their IDE will
probably encourage further growth on their platform, which is good for
us, I'd say.

4. If you have access to an NXT (I don't have spares at the moment),
you could look at connecting up with that crowd and pushing forward on
a Plumbing-like layer for robotics programming for the NXT.

This would be occam-pi and C work, and would involve keeping Jon
Simpson and Carl Ritson in the loop.

5. VM Performance. I think there is low-hanging fruit in the VM. For
example, we could switch from a stack-based representation to a
register representation, and perhaps see a performance increase? There
may be other ways to do (portable) performance increases. (Again,
others should weigh in.) This would improve the performance of all our
platforms.

This is C work. Christian and Adam would have thoughts in this space.

6. Propose something cool. If you think you'd like to tackle something
specific/task-oriented with an Arduino, and try and use the tools to
do it. It will grow the library (because you'll almost certainly
discover things that should be in the Plumbing library), and we'll do
our best to help support you.

Those are some things that come to mind. Other members of the team are
encouraged to push back, as are you!

Cheers,
Matt