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Re: A question


Stephen J. Guthrie wrote in message ...
>A good post and very informative, all.  I am not really inclined to switch
>one for the other, I want to go with the language of the 21st century.  It
>seems the grammer will be object oriented, now how do we select the
semantic
>vehicle?
>
>One one hand I'm looking at a tool in use at Disney (a plus) by several of
>the best graphics engineers in the world.  On the other, I'm looking at a
>language pulled back from the abyss by a company that is unknow to me.
>Smalltalk doesn't have to defend its origins or ability to me, Dylan may.
>
>I started out by buying Dylan (this, I assume, is a good thing) and I am
now
>curious as to whether I should throw good money after bad.
>
>Thanks,
>


Here's a very un-scientific recommendation for using Dylan - I've been using
Dylan in one form or another for almost 6 years now. The more I use it, the
more I like it.

One of it's most endearing features is the ability to approach a problem
from multiple paradigms;
Procedural - methods can be treated as "just" procedures, classes/objects as
data structures,
Functional - most of the power of Lisp in a syntax that I find more friendly
(I love what Lisp does, I just get lost in the parens sometimes ...),
Object-Oriented - Clean object model, nice support for multiple inheritance,
Domain-Specific Languages - between the macro capability and o-o, it's easy
to create domain specific language constructs.

You get all of this, and everything is still "objects all the way down" ala
SmallTalk.

The un-endearing features;
It's new,
MicroSoft doesn't support it so it'll never be a "no-brainer" of a choice,
It's not well supported by delivery-grade compilers (changing slowly but
surely - Thanks F.O. and the Gwydion guys),
Did I mention it's new (if you can call a >10 year old language new).


Good luck in your choice,

Ron Franke-Polz
References: