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Re: New Lisp ?



Bijan Parsia <bparsia@email.unc.edu> writes:

> 	   To wit, if you're going to abandone Lispy syntax, a *Pascal
> 	like* syntax probably isn't a good idea?

I don't think that introducing a Pascal-like syntax was a bad idea.
Dropping the Lispy syntax was the bad idea.

In the static language camp, I can happily mix libraries from Fortran,
Pascal, C and C++.  If there were interoperability between an infix
and a prefix Lisp-like language, that would be a huge win.

> 	   Does sealing really help? How much? How constraining is it?
> 	What does it permit by way of optimization that CL doesn't?

One instance where sealing really helps is arithmetics.  Witness Java
for a language that gives up it's OO approach for fast integers, and
the problems this introduces.  In Dylan, integers are objects like all
others, still arithmetics is fast, because operations are sealed.

> 	  It does make me wonder how much of the goals of Dylan would have
> 	been better realized as an extention of Common Lisp (e.g., a bunch
> 	of packages) rather than merely having been implemented in it.

I like the "objects from the grounds up" approach, and Dylan feels
very clean and consistent to me.  That couldn't have been achieved by
a couple of libraries.

Andreas

(Followup-To set to comp.lang.dylan)

-- 
"In my eyes it is never a crime to steal knowledge. It is a good
theft. The pirate of knowledge is a good pirate."
                                                       (Michel Serres)



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