In a July 12 message to this list, I applauded Frieder Nake's idea to create diagrams to help other recode his early computer art. In the same message, however, I mentioned Jeff Rothenberg's skepticism about developing a generalizable abstract language for representing code, given the idiosyncrasies of computer languages and hardware.
I just caught wind of the Wyvern project out of CMU, which attempts to be a "polyglot" language that can detect which language software is written in at any given point and execute the appropriate instructions:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/new-nsa-funded-programming-language-is-all-programming-languages-in-one
Despite the fanfare, Wyvern seems to me less a generalized abstraction than a yoking together of disparate languages. Despite its NSA funding in the name of security, this hodgepodge will likely multiply potential failure points rather than reduce them. I fail to see how Wyvern like any chimera, will turn out to be anything more than a fantasy.
So let's hear it for diagrams :)
jon
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