
Sorry if I introduce this topic in its own post NASAL, but it seems the most appropriate context for my proposal / provocation:
Why not use Erlang instead of NASAL?
Erlang is a functional programming language that supports concurrent
programming. Computations in Erlang can proceed in parallel on
a network of computers, and the language is designed to ensure that
no unwanted interactions occur.
The key concepts in Erlang are: functions, single-assignment variables,
tuples, pattern matching, race conditions, message-passing and
recursion.
(I am analyzing the use of Erlang to program a set of Raspeberry of my laboratory, this oriented language on interprocess messages and on parallel processes I can solve many problems that Python and Java can not solve in a fast and reliable and at the same time. .. with compact code)
I honestly do not find Python suitable for FGFS, the reason is the lack of a message handling interprocess and the difficulty of performing parallel processes. Python was born as a scripting language to run on a single CPU. Then there have been extensions, excellent libraries (but very tied to the operating system ...) and many programmers who know him. But it scares me the idea of replacing NASAL with Python, as a plane has many systems and each of these is executed in parallel. Then these processes will have to speak ... etc ...
NASAL, is certainly a primitive language and poor, but has developed a very good idea, to run each process with their own interpreter, small lightweight and fast enough for many applications. But NASAL is not a widespread language ... very few developers (1..3?) Very few programmers (10 ... 100?) And in any case is not a good language because its virtual machine does not handle more than one CPU, the interprocess messages are there but ... honestly ... are not the best ...
Erlang instead has a large base of professional users and companies (such as FaceBook uses it to chat). There are also OpenGL extensions (Has anyone tested the application of 3D graphics: Wings3D ... that uses a full and fast OpenGL interface?)
Obviously Erlang has a very good documentation and many examples that can guide those who want to challenge themselves with this language.
You can be used in parallel with NASAL? Why not ! Just declare the XML script that the code we have written in Erlang and is not NASAL and the game is done!
Erlang provides a complete C ++ bindings using its own messaging, which binds well with the data model of FGFS.
Let us read this paper on Erlang:
http://www.tamale.net/erlang/tutorial.shtml
http://www.it.uu.se/edu/course/homepage/prognovis/st11/reading/erlang-concepts.pdf
An official user guide:
http://erlang.org/doc/getting_started/users_guide.html
An easy tutorial:
http://learnyousomeerlang.com/introduction#kool-aid
Does it make sense?