Where to Go from Here

So, we're working on the Transterpreter? That's great! But, how? In my last post, I mentioned that we were working on building a package for the Atom text editor from GitHub. Our package should take the Occam-pi code written in the editor, send it to the Transterpreter server for compilation, then send the compiled code to an Arduino.

Why is this an important contribution to the Transterpreter?

Enter, Plumbing (Plumb2 in it's current state). Plumbing is a set of tools developed for the Transterpreter project to provide anyone with the ability to program on small platforms like the Arduino. Even though plumbing already provides a way to remotely compile code through the Transterpreter, there is very little support for it. In fact, the GitHub site for the concurrency organization (which hosts the Transterpreter, Plumb, and all supporting code) only has 4 contributors. Only one of them seems to still consistently make changes to the code in these repositories.

Hmmmm, something seems wrong.

While researching this aspect of the Transterpreter (Plumbing, that is), I am starting to wonder if I fully grasp what Plumbing is. I took a break from writing and have reached out to my team members to see if we could possibly define what we are working on before we dive in and potentially mess up or leave major aspects out. Sorry to leave you in a state of suspense, but I will have an update as soon as I am comfortable with my knowledge of Plumbing!

So Long OpenMRS, and Thanks for All the... Fish?

    After half of a semester, and no successful changes to OpenMRS among the entire team, we have decided to part ways. It is bittersweet not to see all of the hard work from the 12 members of the OpenMRS team come to fruition. But, we have all decided that after so many promising paths that ultimately did not pan out, we would be better off working on other projects.

    Some of our previous team members have invested their talents in projects that are already being worked on by other teams. I; however, had to be difficult! Along with two of my previous group members (Austin Farmer, and Craig Warner), I have decided to start working on the Transterpreter project.

What is the Transterpreter?

    The Transterpreter is a project that was originally worked on by our professor, Dr. Matt Jadud. In short, the Transterpreter is a tool that allows the Occam-pi programming language to run on platforms similar to the Arduino. Occam-pi is a process-oriented concurrent programming language.

So, where do we fit in to this project?

    Right now, we have a very limited knowledge of how the core of the Transterpreter works. This is due to the sheer complexity of the project, the relatively short amount of time we have looked at it, and the "bug" that we have begun to address.

    We have started to work on developing a plugin for the Atom text editor (A hackable text editor for the 21st Century). Our plugin should hopefully take code written in Occam-pi, send them to the Transterpreter server (where it will be compiled), and send the compiled code to an Arduino.

    That's all the new information I have for now. But when headway has been made (or maybe not...), I will be sure to write more!