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Re: A question

Well, I would describe Dylan as "struggling for traction". I am hopeful
that this fine language will see commercial success with FO (the first
time that there has been a company whose sole interest is Dylan) and
that the Gwydion open-source effort will pass critical mass. I am
playing with FO Dylan in spare moments, off and on, to see what is there
now.

As for Smalltalk, single inheritance is just flat out a mistake in
language design. (If you disagree, don't bother trying to convince me,
because you won't create even the tiniest bit of doubt in my mind.) I
cannot stand the thought of learning another of those SI class libraries
with an outrageously deep hierarchy with functionality pushed up into
totally counterintuitive classes in order to get it where it can be
shared. A well-designed MI-based framework/library is so much easier to
understand and extend than an SI one.

Of course I'm not trying to claim that you should choose a development
tool based solely on the SI/MI dichotomy. I just wanted to point out
that shortcoming, which I personally think deserves more weight than
most give it.

BTW - Smalltalk can be forgiven this flaw because it was pioneering many
concepts when it was created; certainly a couple of decades of
experience with OO were bound to come up with some additional valuable
concepts. Java, OTOH, simply has no excuse. Sun lazily left out a key OO
feature and now invests many millions in convincing developers that MI
is not in Java because it is "bad" and leaving it out somehow improves
the language. Purest bullshit.

And there are other Dylan goodies: for instance the macro system and
multimethods.

Hey, don't even ask me what multimethods are good for. At this point I
think my understanding of them is analogous to a (perceptive) neophyte
who has just been "taught" about recursion with the infamous factorial
example. It's a neat language feature that I'm convinced must be very
powerful, but I don't quite know what to do with it!

Next time pick something easier. Ask us to help you choose between Dylan
and C++, or Java, or Objective-C, or Object Pascal, or Cool ;-)


"Stephen J. Guthrie" wrote:
> 
> I purchased the Dylan Professional from Harlequin about a year ago and
> stopped using it entirely after the recent events with FO.  I'm considering
> picking the language back up but I would like an objective evaluation as to
> why I should.
> 
> I recently began programming in Squeak (Smalltalk).  Give me a reason to
> come back to Dylan.
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