4 ms·

I don't think I'd want code to self-heal on the fly, even less in anything safety critical. But maybe a similar method could be used as part of static analysis

by tveita 10y ago

I don't think I'd want code to self-heal on the fly, even less in anything safety critical. But maybe a similar method could be used as part of static analysis to help programmers. It could look through your functions and search for library functions you could import to replace them with. Or it could look for functions that do very nearly the same, but handle edge cases differently.

catnaroek 10y ago
How can this be used as a part of static analysis, when it works by running your code?
- tree_of_item 10y ago
  Because you can divide your runtime in to multiple stages: if program A runs and outputs program B, then from B's point of view A was able to perform a static analysis of B's behavior. You can always view the term and type levels of a programming language as two separate but intertwined languages. In this case, both the term and type level would be identical instead of the type level being specialized with logic programming-esque constructs as usual.
  - catnaroek 10y ago
    That's not what's happening in this case. You're fixing a program that has just run if it doesn't pass certain validations. This is pretty much by definition not possible in a static analysis, whose purpose is to determine whether a putative program is in fact worth running in the first place. On the other hand, in a typed language, when you check whether a term “t” has type “T”, it's a precondition that “T” is a valid type. If you haven't established that “T” is a type, you have to establish it first.
holyOrIonsBelt 10y ago
You are arguing for and against the same logic, but defending one level of abstraction as good and another as poor. Functions that you define take parametrized input and use predefined logical constructs and produce some output. Self-healing (diction demands a more appropriate word, perhaps rectifying as code isn't defined ontologically as holistic, though a reordering of ethics might serve that purpose one day), so: self-rectifying code does so by working in the boundary conditions set by the logician who defines its instruction, and merely iterates through code chunks and tests against user defined output until it is successful. The big O to achieve fairly complex goals makes implementation very manageable, I presented a paper on this at my alma mater a few years ago and was a bit surprised it had yet to receive much traction. Every parameter can be included in the logic to ensure space and time complexity restraints are met, as well as code style. Would you argue against a medical procedure that heals your cells instead of healing your organ at the tissue level?

by tveita 10y ago

catnaroek 10y ago

How can this be used as a part of static analysis, when it works by running your code?

tree_of_item 10y ago
Because you can divide your runtime in to multiple stages: if program A runs and outputs program B, then from B's point of view A was able to perform a static analysis of B's behavior. You can always view the term and type levels of a programming language as two separate but intertwined languages. In this case, both the term and type level would be identical instead of the type level being specialized with logic programming-esque constructs as usual.
- catnaroek 10y ago
  That's not what's happening in this case. You're fixing a program that has just run if it doesn't pass certain validations. This is pretty much by definition not possible in a static analysis, whose purpose is to determine whether a putative program is in fact worth running in the first place. On the other hand, in a typed language, when you check whether a term “t” has type “T”, it's a precondition that “T” is a valid type. If you haven't established that “T” is a type, you have to establish it first.

holyOrIonsBelt 10y ago

You are arguing for and against the same logic, but defending one level of abstraction as good and another as poor. Functions that you define take parametrized input and use predefined logical constructs and produce some output. Self-healing (diction demands a more appropriate word, perhaps rectifying as code isn't defined ontologically as holistic, though a reordering of ethics might serve that purpose one day), so: self-rectifying code does so by working in the boundary conditions set by the logician who defines its instruction, and merely iterates through code chunks and tests against user defined output until it is successful. The big O to achieve fairly complex goals makes implementation very manageable, I presented a paper on this at my alma mater a few years ago and was a bit surprised it had yet to receive much traction. Every parameter can be included in the logic to ensure space and time complexity restraints are met, as well as code style. Would you argue against a medical procedure that heals your cells instead of healing your organ at the tissue level?