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3:37:33
drmeister
I'm done. People were very receptive. I met the grandfather of genetic programming and a bunch of AI people.
3:41:41
SAL9000
drmeister: I'm glad to hear that everything went well! I've been fighting some inconsistent behaviour from Docker, but it seems that mounting folders works now. Any ideas on how to translate a path name from C:/ALL/UPPER/CASE to C:/The/real/PathNameCase ? I'm extracting compilation database data from Visual Studio logfiles, and for some reason Visual Studio loves to uppercase everything. Perhaps it wants to be
3:59:06
drmeister
Mixed case no - I don't know how to deal with that. I'll take it as a warning not to use mixed case
4:00:00
drmeister
But I think that thing I was talking about - running a clasp within docker to scrape c++ code and build bindings will work.
4:00:33
drmeister
People here wanted a way to automatically build wrappers for Python. Bleh but doable
4:06:15
drmeister
12 hours each day talking to people non-stop. Being on and social that long is so draining.
4:07:48
drmeister
There's this one very prominent computational chemist who every time I'm asked to speak he pipes up and comments on everything I say. Saying this is how things should be done or talking about his own research.
4:10:34
drmeister
Today was better. They had a program officer of the Moore Foundation come and I was asked to pitch my work to him.
4:14:35
drmeister
There were some AI people developing OpenCog. I met the lead developer and we he has been proposing using AI/machine learning/genetic programming to design molecules for a year now - but doesn't know much chemistry.
4:16:10
drmeister
He's the grandfather of genetic programming - really nice guy. We got along great as well. He has some students start a company about 10 years ago to design molecules using genetic programming.
4:16:39
drmeister
It failed but think I know why - he's having dinner with his former student who did that tomorrow - we are going to talk...
4:17:37
drmeister
There was also a group that want to develop an integrated software system that can integrate disparate molecular simullation software into a cohesive package with common ways to interchange data.
4:18:01
drmeister
That's what Cando does - it's easy to incorporate C++/C/Fortran libraries and expose them to Common Lisp.
4:19:06
drmeister
Anyway, there were many people who want software that does the hard things that Cando does.
4:21:27
drmeister
So we need to get the jupyter widgets working so I can show people that you can draw molecules into it and visualize molecules that it builds. That will really connect with people. That and all the calculations it can do in between and we make some molecular dynamics engines accessible from within it - it's going to be extremely interesting.
4:25:06
drmeister
But there's something to be said for going into the wilderness and building something on your own for a few years.
4:26:00
drmeister
This meeting was a lot of "we need this software that does X and Y" and then me there demonstrating that Cando does those things.
4:26:53
drmeister
John Koza has used genetic programming and written software to design electronic circuits. He's patented a lot of designs that were generated by his AI. It was really exciting.
4:27:50
drmeister
He pointed out that the little bend on airplane wings that you see on modern planes was invented by a genetic algorithm - not designed by a human being.
4:28:43
drmeister
So I designed molecules that I think are more amenable to design and I've been writing the software to carry out the design.
4:30:06
drmeister
He made a compelling case that genetic algorithm and genetic programming is more powerful than simulated annealing because of the sexual recombination step swapping parts of different solutions between each other.
4:31:40
drmeister
These are all relatively easy to code - its the domain specific building and scoring functions that are hard to write.
4:33:04
drmeister
When they designed circuitry with GA and GP (genetic algorithms and genetic programming) they got a copy of SPICE (circuit design/simulation software package) and translated it into C so that they could link it in to their GA and GP code.
4:33:27
drmeister
They worked hard to get a tight loop between the design generation and design testing.
4:33:55
drmeister
They worked hard to keep the SPICE C version from crashing because that would shut everything down.
4:36:28
drmeister
Anyway, I'm very certain that I'm doing the right thing and that I'm ahead of anyone else in several ways - better molecules and better software.
4:38:05
drmeister
I hope so - it may still all be wrong - it may be that molecules can't be designed. That the real world is hard and our models are inadequate. But I'm pretty sure I've got the best approach.
4:38:47
drmeister
Anyway, I'm exhausted and I have a redeye back to Philadelphia in 30 min. I need to send some email responses to people emailing me.
4:39:33
drmeister
I think we lost Bike - I'll try and get some sleep so I can spend the day with him tomorrow.
4:40:59
drmeister
Oh - one other thing. The openCog folks (AI folks) use C++ and they integrated it with Guile (GCC Scheme implementation).
4:41:33
drmeister
The GA/GP people use C but they use S-expressions to describe their GA/GP engines.
4:55:07
akkad
languages are as expressive as a bird in flight. some people stuff the bird and stick it on a shelf and call it the clhs.
11:16:28
SAL9000
drmeister: FYI, the mixed-case thing wasn't meant as a warning against it -- it's visual studio being stupid and writing all-caps paths to its logfiles, rather than the real paths
11:23:43
drmeister
Ok. I've run into problems with Common Lisp pathnames and OS X paths vs Linux. That's what I was reminded of when you asked that question.
11:24:19
Shinmera
SAL9000: Think of all the DOS users Microsoft has to be backwards compatible to :^)
11:24:43
SAL9000
Sure, but I'd think it was about time that said backwards-compat was, say, relegated to a flag
11:25:14
SAL9000
the fact that Visual Studio upcases all paths in its logs for no good reason doesn't seem to have a grounding in compatibility, either
11:26:34
drmeister
It reinforces my distaste for graphical programming environments. More hoops to jump through.
11:27:15
Shinmera
What your editor prints to a log files has hardly anything to do with how much of a GUI it has
11:27:57
SAL9000
I shouldn't have to parse logfiles to get a JSON compilation database out of a library
11:28:35
Shinmera
I think this is less of an IDE thing and more of a Microsoft thing. They love their internal formats.
11:28:37
SAL9000
just about any sane non-IDE compilation system can be run under a wrapper to easily get a DB out of it
11:29:08
Shinmera
I think the epitome of that is that shortcuts on Windows are a binary blob that is undocumented.
11:30:36
SAL9000
Right. Well, those are saner too, although they still piss me off because .ini and all kinds of underdocumented Magic Fields
11:31:32
Shinmera
It runs a script that updates the desktop file and then launches it. Won't make it work when you extract it, but works after first launch
11:32:25
Shinmera
Anyhoo, my original point was that Microsoft seems to love to make undocumented, internal formats for everything any of their programs touch.
11:33:16
SAL9000
Yeah. WRT IDEs, my counterpoint was that Eclipse had a similar level of "magic" in it's build system/project files
11:37:54
Shinmera
NetBeans used to be better back in the day when I still used Java for myself. I wonder if it's turned into a pile of dung just like Eclipse has.