i have an article on my desk about this microsoft language called c#. i even don't now how to speak it out loud: ¿[c rhombus]? sounds stupid, ¿[csharp]?, porqué. anyhow in this report they raised the question when and how .net is supporting mobile code and how "the mechanism provided compare with those available in java."

they are saying, i really like that line:

"c# is an object-oriented language and can be regarded as a high-level version of the misl, in that all the features of c# are natively supported by the crl.

on the surface c# is quite similar to java. however it provides some distinctive features ... the notion of delegate, the support of application events as a first class language construct, and the notion of attribute. ... difference between .net and java: ".net assemblies define a rather coarse-grained unit, if compared with java classes. while it is possible to define assemblies containing only one type, it would be cumbersome to do so, since it is the programmer's responsibility to keep track of relationships among assemblies."

code loading: "java supports proactive code loading, while .net supports only reactive code loading, and in a fashion that always privileges the default loading strategy". you are only allowed to modify the loading behavior when the predefined fails.

.net offers less freedom and flexibility than java, but also less complexity when dealing with mobile code: in java programming with class loaders is often difficult and error prone.

nice paper on software agents from jeffrey m. bradshaw

“The idea of an agent originated with John McCarthy in the mid-1950’s, and the term was coined by Oliver G. Selfridge a few years later, when they were both at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They had in view a system that, when given a goal, could carry out the details of the appropriate computer operations and could ask for and receive advice, offered in human terms, when it was stuck. An agent would be a ‘soft robot’ living and doing its business within the computer’s world.” (Kay 1984)

talking also about that "explosion in the use of the term without a corresponding con-sensus on what it means", describing early approaches and what drives the development

"The emphasis has subtly shifted from deliberation to doing; from reasoning to remote action."

and what remains to be confusing:

"one person’s “intelligent agent” is another person’s “smart object”; and today’s “smart object” is tomorrow’s “dumb program.”

if programming languages would speak. meet those without an invitation at the comments:

Why didn't Smalltalk join this little languages' smalltalk? (Maybe it was on an elegant dinner with Scheme?)

I was with Ada pet pet Posted by: Forth

Clear case why others didn't come: SQL was too busy. Objective C didn't get the message. The message to super failed because it didn't conform to the protocol. Scheme forgot to invite itself. The car blew up as soon as Flash turned the engine on, so he didn't make it. It would have been nice though. C6x assembly would only come in 8 copies next to each other, which wouldn't fit in the meadow. PEARL would have made it on time to the nanosecond if it were still alive.