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Re: Harlequin
On 12 Jul 1999, Jeff Dalton wrote:
> > Jeff Dalton <jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk> wrote in message
> > news:comp.lang.dylan.199907091617.RAA28699@todday.aiai.ed.ac.uk...
> > >> There are lots
> > >> of cool languages I'd be interested in learning and using -- but not
> > >> sufficiently interested to install the Unix blight on my system. I
> > *know*
> > >> I'm not the only person who thinks that way. Most of my fellow
> > development
> > >> team members here, for example, think this way -- even the guy who is our
> > >> Unix guy.
> >
> > > Really? The "Unix guy" wouldn't want to install "the Unix blight"
> > > on his system? What kind of "Unix guy" is that?
> >
> > One who feels no need to inflict Unix on himself at home just because it is
> > inflicted upon him at work. (I was probably unclear as to the point that he
> > didn't want to install Unix on his *home* system.)
>
> I'd still say "What kind of `Unix guy' is that?". You said "even
> ... our Unix guy". Well, it's not very interesting that a "Unix
> guy" who doesn't like Unix, doesn't like Unix; so why the "even"?
Yes, I read your comment that way too, and was surprised by Michael's odd
definition of "Unix guy". FWIW, I'll do either.
> > My objection is to the plethora of software out there which is built under
> > the theory that "cross-platform" means converting all other platforms to
> > Unix.
>
> I do not believe anyone has any such theory about what
> "cross-platform" means.
>
> There is, of course, software that that's Unix based and made
> available for other platforms in ways that are awkward for
> those platforms. But a number of developers are working in
> Unix, and often, given time and other constraints, that's the
> best that they can reasonably do.
>
> There's also a great deal of software that's for Windows that
> they does not work at all under Unix. (At best, some kind of
> emulator might be able to handle it -- way of converting the
> other platform to Windows.)
>
> In fact, there seems to be more of that software than the other
> kind. Moreover, I suspect that making software feel natural
> on both Unix and Windows will very often mean making it rather
> Windows-like. I am not trying to suggest that *you* will fail
> to make software feel equally natural on both platforms -- I
> just suspect that often it won't be.
There are several examples of open source development environments
that work OK on Windows and Unix, for varying values of "OK". My short
list includes Python, Icon, Erlang, Objective Caml, and GNAT Ada 95.
Making the build process feel natural is trickier. If you are willing
to limit your options on Unix, and rely solely on Makefiles and a C
compiler, you can create Makefile.{nt, 98} variants which work fine on
Windows. I'd even think this was a good thing if the removed Unix
utilities were replaced by Dylan code in the build process, so that an
early step would build a subset of Dylan interpreter, which is then used
in the later steps as a scripting language and as the language of the
compiler itself.
-- Brian
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