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Re: Diversity - existence, value, and pursuit.



On Sat, Dec 01, 2001 at 09:10:02AM -0800, Terrence Brannon wrote:
> Given that there are Scheme implementations which execute as fast 
> a C and given that Scheme is much more readable that it appears 
> that Parrot will be, what is wrong with Scheme serving as the 
> "virtual machine" for Ruby, Perl, Python?

Um, nothing.  Are you interested in writing that VM?  :-)

A nontrivial amount of time has gone into the designs of Perl, Python,
Ruby and Parrot.  The people interested in writing Parrot want to 
continue with that experience and knowledge.

However, Parrot isn't expected to be the only platform that Parrot-targeted
languages can run on -- Java's VM and the CLR also come quickly to mind.  
If you're seriously interested in having a VM for Perl/Python/Ruby, there's
nothing preventing you from writing a Parrot VM in Scheme.

The advantage is that's *all* you'd need to write.  Reimplementing Perl,
Python or Ruby in Scheme *today* would be much more difficult proposition.
(I note that there aren't any JVMs written in Scheme, either.)

Z.