David Apfelbaum's Home Page

David Apfelbaum, Senior Research Programmer, Carnegie Mellon University.
da0g+@cs.cmu.edu
(plan file)

I work for Dr. Reid Simmons building software design tools for Task Control Architecture spinoff projects. The TCA project itself has bifurcated into TCM, which handles the Task Control Management aspects, and TCX, which handles the interprocess communication. This bifurcation permits TCM to be used with other forms of interprocess communication, such as CORBA, etc...

My original work involved creating a visual programming environment to visualize TCM constraints while software was being written. As time went on, we came to realize that our approaches to visual programming (for highly detailed and complex software) were suboptimal compared to more traditional approaches such as text-editing. Furthermore, our intermediate language TDL (Task Description Language), originally developed for the purpose of saving and loading files in the visual development tool, was proving to be quite useful in its own right.

TDL, the Task Description Language, is an extension of C++. It adds concurrent procedures, called Tasks, as well as constraints between those Tasks. (<Need to add TDL reference-link in here. -DA>) As TDL has proven to be quite useful, the focus of my work has shifted to TDLC, the TDL -to- C++ translator. TDLC is written mostly in Java, for maximal portability and convenience. It even runs under the netscape command-line JVM interface. Although there is also a C++ library that works along with Java-based translator to facilitate dynamic binding at runtime.

TDLC continues to be a major focus of my work. I am also involved in interfacing TDLC into the Beesoft robot-control environment. This work is part of the Mercator Project, in which I am using TDL as the interface language between the high-level planner MACBeth and the low-level Beesoft robot control software.

Contact Information:

Personal:

My last name is pronouced AP-FELL-BOMB, but I prefer to be called David or Dave. Areas of personal interest include:

• Alpha Phi Omega. (I'm an Advisor of CMU's Kappa Chapter.)
• Computers. Linux, NeXTs, Suns, & SGI's.
• Video Arcade Games. (Former member of VAPS)
• Amateur Radio. (KA2GGL)

Favorite Quote(s):

Excellence can be attained if you:

• Care more than others think is wise.
• Risk more than others feel is safe.
• Dream more than others think is practical.
• Expect more than others think is possible.

Favorite Links:

Please see my List O' Links page.

Last Updated May 1st, 2001.