Re: Diversity - existence, value, and pursuit.

[Dan Sugalski <address@hidden>]

At 09:10 AM 12/1/2001 -0800, Terrence Brannon wrote:

>On Saturday, December 1, 2001, at 01:39 AM, Michael Vanier wrote:
>>then I think you'd be staggered at how popular DrScheme would become.  I
>>don't think people really have a problem with scheme's semantics, just with
>>the syntax and with the mostly-functional programming model that is natural
>>in scheme (which is a whole other issue).
>
>Given that there are Scheme implementations which execute as fast a C and 
>given that Scheme is much more readable that it appears that Parrot will 
>be, what is wrong with Scheme serving as the "virtual machine" for Ruby, 
>Perl, Python?

I think the set of scheme programmers good enough to do this who are also 
familiar enough with ruby, perl and/or python is empty. Certainly far too 
small to sustain development. Plus there are portability issues.

Parrot's in C not because it's the best language for the task (it isn't, by 
far--I loathe C in a number of ways) but because it's both widespread 
enough to have a reasonably large group of folks competent in it for our 
purposes, and on enough platforms to be give us a chance of running everywhere.

					Dan

--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski                          even samurai
dan@sidhe.org                         have teddy bears and even
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