[m-dev.] Article in Linux Magazine

[Jörg Roman Rudnick]

Dear Developer-Team,


to my surprise - I was told ago by an editor that this hardly happens, I 
got the news that an article contributed to German "Linux Magazin" has 
found its way to the international edition,

          http://www.linux-magazine.com
              
I must apologize I found the mail not before today in the afternoon, and 
I was asked to contribute changes until tomorrow 12:00 central european 
time.  The whole thing is to appear in the May 2007 issue, having six pages.

Frankly, I see a good deal of modifications to be done, e.g.
+ the historical notes - to my current knowledge Mercury was developed 
independently from any efforts of Phil Wadler (I am ashamed..., and yes, 
of course I am into linear logic...)
+ to my opinion, the reference to HAL and constraints is definitely 
outdated; G12 is more than exciting, but I am afraid I am lacking enough 
info about it... (btw., Ondrej, I was not very successful in convincing 
Roman Bartak that Mercury is exactly what he needs - perhaps you do 
better...)
+ as I got to know you have own didactical concepts, of course I expect 
you have a clear imagination how you would prefer Mercury to be 
presented to the public
+ I was unsure whom to count as major representatives of Mercury
...
+ of course, I hope to get the code examples in the boxes looking nicer...

Being asked not to publish the draft on a website, nor a 'large 
mailing', I may post it to people pledging to keep it confidential.

Let me cite Joe Casad, who contacted me from Linux Magazine, about the 
the readership:

The important thing is that the English magazine covers a broader range
of readers. If you are familiar with the German Linux New Media
magazines, you will know that they serve the Linux readership through
two publications: LinuxUser for end users and Linux-Magazin for
professionals. In the English magazine, we serve both groups with one
publication. We have many developers and system admins, but we also
have many readers who are not so advanced. As a result, we try to
maintain the deep technical focus, but we often need to provide some
additional background information for readers who are not familiar with
the technical context for the article. Of course, it is impossible to
always make everyone happy, so often we just try to do the best we can
in the available space.

I think Mercury has quite a lot of facets appealing to the informed 
beginner of functional/logic programming - just this afternoon, before 
partaking an AI examination covering Prolog, a student being an avid 
Linux geek expressed his dissapointment and how he missed OO and 
modularization features. Mercury might be more inviting to this fraction 
of people, I hope.

All the best,

                 Nick


 


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