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Norvig's Dyaln review [was: Dylan in the press?]

I'm not familiar with Functional Developer, but here's the 5 second
summary what Norvig has to say.  I should mention that the article is
specifically focused on "rapid development."

Norvig gave Functional Developer 2.0 a 3-star rating.  I don't know
how many stars were possible, but his ratings ranged from 2 (for
Active Python 2.0) to 3.5 (for Allegro CL and Macintosh CL).  He
listed the following pros:
1. Variable-level dynamism; choose flexible or fast as needed.
2. Offers well-written documentation and tutorials.
3. Full-featured project development environment with CORBA, database
and other tools available.

Here are his cons:
1. Single-vendor, low-profile language.
2. No visual GUI builder.
3. Library of existing open-source software not as big as for other
languages reviewed here.

The text provides a brief history of Dylan and a simple overview of
the environment.  He mentions the use of color-coding to provide
optimization guidelines, talks about the various abilities provided
by the different editions, and says the magic words, "Dylan is, in
most ways, a technically superior alternative to Java."

Hope this helps.  It's all from Peter Norvig, "Extreme Rapid
Development," _Software Development_, March 2001.

Thom

Scott Ribe <scott_ribe@killerbytes.com> writes:
> On Sun, Feb 4, 2001, Chris Double <chris@double.co.nz> wrote:
> 
> >>From a recent comp.lang.lisp posting:
> >
> >  "I just received the March 2001 Software Development magazine (
> >  www.sdmagazine.com) and Peter Norvig wrote an interesting article
> >  called Extreme Rapid Development comparing Active Python, Franz ACL
> >  (windows), Digitool MCL, and Functional Developer (Dylan)."
> >
> >Anyone read the article and can comment on the Functional Developer
> >portion?
> 
> I can't locate the magazine--doesn't seem to be very widely distributed.

-- 
Thom Goodsell                           tgg@cra.com
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