Subject: Re: ML for Macs

From: "Michael A. Cleron" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Nov 1989 17:16:22 PST

again. I lost it.  Phil
     
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Philip,
     
We are using an interpreter from Meta Software Corporation in Cambridge, MA.
(617) 567-6920.  Their major product is something called Design/ML, which
is advertised as an interactive programming environment for symbolic and
graphical computing.  (It's somthing like MacDraw, where each polygon is
an ML listener.)  We don't use Design/ML because it's pretty weird.  You can
contact Meta Software for a demo copy if you are interested.
     
Meta Software also distributes a very stripped ML interpreter, which is
what we use.  Ours comes via Peter Henderson at SUNY Stony Brook.  (Sorry, I
can't find his phone number.)  Henderson is a strong advocate of using ML
in introductory CS courses, and he has some agreement where he can license
universities for ML for next to nothing (I think $15).
     
The interpreter we use is just a straight terminal interface: no
windows, no scrolling, no cut/paste, no editor, and no debugger.
Still, we have found that running ML with a text editor desk accessory
is a reasonable environment.  It's also pretty small: it can be run on
a 1 meg Mac Plus with two drives.  That's a tight fit; it's much happier
with 2+ meg and a hard drive.  We have been using it for a quarter with
no problems, despite the primitive environment.
     
I'm interested in what you plan to do with ML.  If you have time, I'd
like to hear what you would use it for.  It is used at Stanford in a
second year CS theory course.  I chose it because it's possible to
write quick, short programs that are theoretically interesting, such
as computing the transitive closure of a relation, or generating a
truth table for a sentence in propositional logic.
     
- Mike Cleron