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Re: Why I don't use Dylan
In article <7A5b5.89842$HK2.1646245@news20.bellglobal.com>, "Maury
Markowitz" <maury_markowitz@hotmail.com> wrote:
> "Bruce Hoult" <bruce@hoult.org> wrote in message
> bruce-F44D2F.13163411072000@news.akl.ihug.co.nz">news:bruce-F44D2F.13163411072000@news.akl.ihug.co.nz...
> > Hard to avoid, I think. It takes a large investment of time to learn a
> > new programming language
>
> Well I don't know about that. I'd say that a change in language is
> smaller in effort to learn than a change in API.
Except when they go together e.g. Java, Cocoa, SmallTalk.
> I picked up Obj-C in a couple of days. Sure it's different when
> you have some monstrosity like C++ or Ada, but with a well
> designed language and libs, I'm not at all convinced that this
> is a big issue.
Probably true. Which well-designed language and libs that has acheived
immense populatiry in the last decade do you have in mind?
> The real problem, IMHO, is that everyone is burned out by C++. Now all
> OOPS programming will forever be tainted by the effort put into learning
> C++ over the last 5 years or so.
5? I seem to recall starting to use CFront with MacApp in 1990 or so.
> I think Cocoa serves the Apple world very well, although I think it
> would be even better with a Win version. However I do have problems
> with the Obj-C language that I would like to see addressed. So OK,
> what would it take to make Dylan compile onto a Obj-C like runtime?
> Is this a possibility? If so, we all need to talk!
I really must take a look at MacOS X soon. I'm still doing a lot of Mac
development (e.g. my current contract is for a Mac application), but I'm
using CW Pro 4, MacOS 8.6, and haven't been a paying member of Apple's
developer program for a couple of years. Maybe I'm just still
shell-shocked by learning and then abandoning too many technologies
(OpenDoc, Copland, you know the list ...) in the past. Shouldn't be too
hard as I've done a lot of Solaris and Linux work in the last several
years :-)
Anyway, the gist is that I don't know what the Obj-C runtime is like.
My understanding from early NeXT days was that the compiler just gathers
up those Smalltalk-style method selector names into a string, looks them
up in a table to find a numeric selector ID, and adds that as the first
argument to a call to a global "dispatch" function, using a standard C
function call.
Is that correct? Has it changed in the last ten years?
-- Bruce
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