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Re: C# is not Dylan (was: Re: C# : The new language from M$)
On Fri, 11 Aug 2000, David McClain wrote:
> Sorry for joining in so late... But wouldn't it be a pretty simple task to
> design a Lisp-ish front end translator to the existing Dylan compilers? That
> would satisfy the Lispers among us and give us back our powerful macro
> system (warts and all!).
Fairly simple for the core syntax, although there might be some syntactic
subtleties or ways in which "Lisp/Scheme-like Dylan" would confuse
Lispers/Schemers, which would be bad. (For example, how do "lists which
are function calls" and "lists which are quoted" compare?)
The real killer is user-written macros. If people have to "port" their
macros between the two surface syntaxes, that's extra hassle and some
people probably wouldn't bother. If you want to (semi-)automate it, I
would guess that's a non-trivial problem; it's surely even harder if you
want to "transliterate" and not just translate, i.e., make macros suit the
standard idioms of each syntax.
Having said that, it sounds like a really cool project :-)
Hugh
> Jon S Anthony wrote in message <395D43D1.5B32@synquiry.com>...
> >Scott Ribe wrote:
> >>
> >> On Fri, Jun 30, 2000, David Bakhash <cadet@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> >>
> >> So, given that you must make a choice, and given that you'd like Dylan to
> >> become popular, which group do you deprive of their comfortable syntax?
> >> The group that is terrified of anything that looks too different? Or the
> >> group that can see beyond the surface and understand what a language
> >> really offers?
> >
> >The oddest thing about this is that "you" ended up "depriving" _both_.
> >A C/C++ hack is _never_ going to go with "pascal-ish" syntax. Never.
> >And the Lisp folks won't go for it because, frankly, it is
> >fundamentally broken with respect to macros.
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