So happy to have stumbled upon this, this is truly awesome, a recounting of Lucid's creation and various details by one of its creators. Probably best to start at the beginning:<p><a href="https://billwadge.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/lucid-the-origins/" rel="nofollow">https://billwadge.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/lucid-the-origins...</a><p>And then work your way forward. The book is also great: <a href="http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~plaice/archive/WWW/1985/B-AP85-LucidDataflow.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~plaice/archive/WWW/1985/B-AP85-L...</a><p>This stuff has a very direct line to the modern "FRP" ideas (with the exception of the <i>actual</i> FRP by Conal Eliot, which is actually quite different from what most of us call FRP, oh details...). And it's so much more cogent.<p>Also check out the Wikipedia page: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_(programming_language)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_(programming_language)</a><p>When I looked at it a while ago, I couldn't find a working implementation, so I banged on it until I got something that at least appeared to work (on OS X): <a href="https://github.com/mpw/pLucid-osx" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/mpw/pLucid-osx</a>
People often say that one should learn Lisp/Prolog/Haskell to become a better programmer. Lucid and Multidimensional Lucid should definitely be added to that list. It just reconfigure your brain around loops and iteration spaces.
I highly suggest reading the original book on Lucid. It completely changed my outlook on programming language design. Section 1.5 is also one of the more hilarious takes on programming culture I've come across, so if you don't read the whole thing, at least read through that little gem. A pdf of the book is linked elsewhere in this thread.
Ashcroft and Wadge also once wrote of U of Waterloo tech note called (as I recall) "Of Yea? The world's first sarcastic programming language". I remember it being really funny, but the only construct I remember is the "Come From" instruction - the sarcastic analogy of GoTo which was a sort-of hot topic back then. Wish I could find a link to the paper....
This reminds me of Guarded Dependent Type theory, which isn't about stream programming, but has the same dimension analysis built into it.<p>Guarded Dependent Type Theory (GDTT) has dimensions (called clocks), fby/sby (called later), clock quantification (to introduce new dimensions), and dimension analysis built into the type system in the form of "clocked universes" (type universes which depend on clocks). The latter is required for the semantics to make sense, but it also allows an implementation without implicit caching. In particular, GDTT does not have an analogue of first for all types, but only for those types which don't themselves depend on the clock parameter and this requires clock dependence to be tracked in the type system.<p>Maybe not so interesting for stream processing as is, but it could probably be extended along those lines...
Without more context it seems to be a relic from the past... Can someone give more context or point me to an implementation, online manual or tutorial? Searching in google does not return much (a wiki page and companies which use the same name).