Flow-Based Programming of Paul Morrison

[Sean Hinde]

On 11 Mar 2005, at 17:24, Vladimir Sekissov wrote:

> Good day,
>
> http://www.jpaulmorrison.com/fbp/index.shtml
> http://www.jpaulmorrison.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl
>
> I've found materials on this site interesting for me and very close to
> Erlang way.
>
> #|
> In "Flow-Based Programming" (FBP), applications are defined as
> networks of "black box" processes, which exchange data across
> predefined connections. These black box processes can be reconnected
> endlessly to form different applications without having to be changed
> internally. It is thus naturally component-oriented.
> |#

The authors response to Erlang is also quite interesting. It seems the 
message did not quite get through (so to speak)

http://www.jpaulmorrison.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ErlangLanguage

I took a quick look at it, and I have a few points:
	• 	 I have trouble picturing running millions of transactions a day on 
it, but maybe you don't need such large volumes.
	• 	 I believe FBP is not really a programming language, so much as a 
'coordination' language - one of its goals is to be able to easily 
interface different languages to each other, rather than provide all 
the things you might want to do in a single language.
	• 	 Looks like ports would have to be added onto Erlang - although you 
can probably simulate them by passing process Ids around.
	• 	 Can FP support a full "2-dimensional" net - I know you said you 
thought this wouldn't be necessary, but I have my doubts. Click here 
[1] for an example.


Sean