Re: What?

[Duane Rettig <address@hidden>]

Rainer Joswig <joswig@lispmachine.de> writes:

> In article <003f01c246ec$6f8bbc10$be8cfd3e@wilde>,
>  "Jason Trenouth" <jason.trenouth@bigfoot.com> wrote:
> 
> > BTW I noticed this embedded citation but I wasn't sure who said it
> > (Andreas?):
> 
> This was my comment. ;-)
> 
> > > >>> I can understand that Dylan does no longer follow above ideas and
> > > >>> tries to be compatible with the mainstream.
> > 
> > Anyway I just wanted to say that perhaps Dylan didn't go far enough for the
> > "mainstream". From comments I've seen on code that compares Java to Dylan,
> > "mainstream" folks don't like the 'flashing neon' of Dylan's use of
> > punctuation symbols.
> 
> Don't forget that at Apple's time mainstream also meant
> Object Pascal. Many applications on the Mac were written
> in it, especially using MacApp. Then it was C++. Now
> it is Objective C.

I really detest all this talk of "mainstream" - the gist of such talk
is that there is only ever one "winner", and that all others are losers.
Since Lisp has never been "mainstream", and never will be (thank
goodness) it will always be considered "a loser" by some.  In a way, that
allows me to "win" within my "losing" language of choice because I'm not
bothered by the mob psychology that comes along with "being mainstream".
Proponents of Dylan should learn this same lesson and be content to do
"the right thing" for their language.

Streams of water are much more complex than just having one winner
and all other tributaries just running to joing the main stream.
If you observe for any length of time running water cutting new paths
through either a flat or jagged landscape, you find that for any given
area, there is a "main" stream relative to that area and a lot of
streams that are not so large, but the dynamics are very complex and
the result is not always a clear "winner" at the larger view.

> It is especially funny that Apple left mainstream by using
> Objective C (and not C++ and not Java) for some of their
> core applications. Now Objective C with its Smalltalkish
> object system is was Dylan could have been. Sigh.

If you take Apple's greater history (and in particular my own
take on history-rewriting that says that "Apple == Jobs" [1]), and
if you look at where Jobs went with Objective-C at NeXT,  you will
then see that Apple didn't really depart from the mainstream at all;
at NeXT, Jobs was in fact using and promoting promising technology
that could have become "mainstream" but for NeXT's failure to reach
its goals.  At the time, C++ was an up-and-coming new language, but
so was Objective-C.  Our own version of Allegro CL (which was bundled into
every NeXT cube) had to be enhanced to operate nicely with Objective-C.
I wasn't part of that effort, but as I understood it was not very
hard; we did define an extra lisp-type called an objc-instance, and
enhanced our foreign-interface to manipulate such instances.

> > I'm not seriously suggesting any change, but I just wanted to say that Dylan
> > fell short of wrapping Lisp in a "mainstream" syntax.
> 
> I'm not really sure there is only one mainstream syntax - C is
> very influential, though.

Lisp's "stream" goes in a different direction than C's.  Part of
the reason for Lisp's syntax is fundamental to its definition (consider
macros as text vs structural, for example).  I consider it a fundamental
language change when such a major part of the language is removed.

I had several discussions on syntax with Dylan designers early in their
design process.  From my point of view, it was clear that they were not
trying to "take" Lisp anywhere, but were trying to cut new ground without
encumberances from Lisp.


[1] When Steve Jobs was at Apple, it was successful.  When he left, it
started floundering, and when he came back again, it started becoming
successful again.  So I equate a successful Apple with Jobs, and I
view his time at NeXT as a sabbatical and a research effort which he
then poured back into his original Company.  NeXT was not commercially
successful, but ended up wildly successful on a technical level in
promoting new ideas both in hardware and in software.  The lineage
of NeXTStep -> Rhapsody -> ... -> Cocoa is pretty clear.

-- 
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