Controlling robots in remotely-operated laboratory using Objection language

Our goal is to enable robots in virtual laboratory to be controlled using the Objection programming language.

Challenges

• The Objection language runtime is written in Delphi and has not been ported to platforms other than Win32 yet
• The codebase of Objection language needs to be reorganized in a way that will allow extending it with Robot library bindings, yet ensure that the runtime core remains independent of it.
• It should be possible to replace the runtime core with a newer Objection version with as little effort as possible
• Integration to existing virtual laboratory system
• End user interface

Language

Objection is a multiparadigm programming language, written partially in itself. Every value is a first class object, including functions. Blocks of code are anonymous functions and language constructs such as loops only manipulate with functions. All of this is hidden underneath a classical, structured syntax, but remains fully accessible for the user to explore.

Here is a short list of Objection features:

• garbage collection
• optimized tail recursion
• first class functions
• anonymous functions
• closures
• generators (via the yield keyword)
• duck typing
• all values are objects
• prototype object model (can be used indirectly using class-like syntactic sugar)
• operator overloading
• basic data structures literals
• infinite lists (via generators)
• classes and metaclasses
• objects ex nihilo
• natural language constructs
• powerfull built-in higher order operators
• eager evaluation
• support for return, break and continue commands
• compiled to bytecode interpreted by Objection Virtual Machine
• editor supporting syntax highlighting (Windows only)

Here is a short list of features that Objection currently lacks:

• short circuit evaluation of boolean operators
• call-by-reference for function arguments
• exceptions
• properties
• large numbers
• sane class library
• API for calling external libraries
• speed