So, just in case you stumbled upon this blog and you're wondering WTF is this all about. It's about our own pet project: a new programming language called rhabarber (It seems that programming languages as a general rule have to have funny names. Ever heard of boo, or groovy?).
Anyway, rhabarber is intended to be a programming language which is highly configurable (a bit like lisp) but still has the look and feel of C. You're asking why? Well, it might be that the syntax-lessness of lisp is a big win, but for us that's only true unless you're doing a lot of arithmetics. It pains severly to write that stuff in lisp. And since we're working on machine learning, seamless integration of matrix algebra is a must.
Stefan and Mikio originally started the project as an alternative to matlab, which is both quite expensive and whose language is a bit too 1970s to be really fun to play with. The first prototype was presented at the Machine Learning Tools Satellite Workshop in Vancouver, December of 2005.
Since then, we've been cleaning up the language design and the internal structure and basically started a rewrite from scratch in the summer of 2007. Currently we're adding the last nice features and are close to releasing the first version. So stay tuned... .
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