~lobsters | Bookmarks (7)

The Actor Model is a message passing concurrency model that was originally proposed by Hewitt et al. in 1973. It is now 43 years later and since then researchers have explored a plethora of variations on this model. This paper presents a history of the Actor Model throughout those years. The goal of this paper is not to provide an exhaustive overview of every...

Abstract: Legal expert systems routinely rely on date computations to determine the eligibility of a citizen to social benefits or whether an application has been filed on time. Unfortunately, date arithmetic exhibits many corner cases, which are handled differently from one library to the other, making faithfully transcribing the law into code error-prone, and possibly leading to heavy financial and legal consequences for users....

Abstract: In France, income tax is computed from taxpayers’ individual returns, using an algorithm that is authored, designed and maintained by the French Public Finances Directorate (DGFiP). This algorithm relies on a legacy custom language and compiler originally designed in 1990, which unlike French wine, did not age well with time. Owing to the shortcomings of the input language and the technical limitations of...