[Grace-core] Minutes of Teleconference 2012.01.04-05

[James Noble]

* "Nothing" - what an assignment, or a method that doesn't return anything - returns - 
 is called Void (for now :-)

Any - top type, type of any object
Object - type of most objects
Void - return type of Commands
None - bottom type 

* Enforce Type names & typevars should start with a Capital 

* what should "classes" begin with - 
 if "objects" are lower case, and classes are objects, then shouldn't classes be lower case?
 if so, can use the same word at different cases for type & class - do we want that?
    (don't mention it)

*  talked about contracts, verification, etc
  * are ghost variables negative brands? 

* should object constructors' products (almost) always implicitly inherit from Object??
  yes - makes everything simpler, avoids incantation
  no - its an *implicit* 

* decided to go for OSCON - needs to be done by Jan 12 - Andrew to submit

* talked about potential SPLASH plans
   - whole cloth white paper to OOPSLA or Onward
   - types paper - if it gets done - to OOPSLA?
   - potentially something cute to the DLS - object annotations?

* talked about annotations
  - annotation on declarations - syntactic issue ("types are statically typed") 
  - annotation on expressions
  - annotations on  types 
- some annotations on classes & object constructors stay around and are attached to objects
 - prime example: brands "myVarNode", "machineInteger"
 - negative brands "ghost"  (and I think "ownedby X")  
- we do need annotations: the question is- how flexible should they be?
   do we need something elaborate, or just add in fixed annotations plus clunky additions?
- more complex issues (dynamic annotations, brands, etc) left for now
   but lets try just with what we have now

* James to perhaps worry about inherited defs not being static

* started talking about blocks & brackets - http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhereDoTheBracesGo
     at very least, need a style guideline. 
     Go does this: http://golang.org/doc/effective_go.html#formatting 
> 	With Go we take an unusual approach and let the machine take care of most formatting issues. The gofmt tool reads a Go program and emits the source in a standard style of indentation and vertical alignment, retaining and if necessary reformatting comments. If you want to know how to handle some new layout situation, run gofmt; if the answer doesn't seem right, rearrange your program (or file a bug about gofmt), don't work around it.


* next meeting:  Tue 10 3pm Pacific, Wed 11 noon NZ ---
   (James not around the week after)