Newsgroups: comp.lang.dylan
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From: cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de (Martin Cracauer)
Subject: Re: Dylan's future
Message-ID: <1996Sep30.122018.23010@wavehh.hanse.de>
Organization: BSD User Group Hamburg
References: <324CEE88.5120@euronet.nl> <james-2809961218020001@slip-60-9.ots.utexas.edu> <52lme3$5os@trumpet.uni-mannheim.de>
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 96 12:20:18 GMT
Lines: 44

mw@ipx2.rz.uni-mannheim.de (Marc Wachowitz) writes:

>James McCartney (james@clyde.as.utexas.edu) wrote:
>> I'm not trying to start flames, but
>> it just seems to me that Dylan has proven too hard to implement to be 
>> successful.

>What's difficult to implement about Dylan? The detailed description
>of the macro facility in the draft of the reference manual is a bit
>confusing in my view (supposedly that's better in the final version;
>I've ordered it, but it isn't there yet), but beyond that, I don't
>know anything in Dylan which would be particularly difficult for an
>implementor. (If I'll find the time, I might even implement a simple
>Dylan to C compiler myself - but don't hold your breath ;-)

I didn't implement a Dylan system, but I think some points for the
delay are quite obvious:

While Dylan's sealed classes are a way to combine static binding and
dynamic languages, it will for sure be hard to implement in a
compiler. I once looked into Objective-C to try to enable static
binding for Objects of fixed classes. I didn't get very far, the
problem requires handling heavy interactitions between the front-end
of the compiler and whatever will produce code. I assume in Dylan
you'll face even more complexity to track down a method call to the
class definition.

I assume neither CMU nor Harlequin will release a compiler without
support for sealed classes. A system with bad performance, but
supposed to be release-quality withh destroy any hope for Dylan within
a few months. Apples TR was OK, marked as what is was.

The second reason for the delay is probably that both groups try to
build a compiler and a good developement system at once. While I think
it wouldn't hurt Dylan to have a compiler without an environment in
the market, a later implementation of the environment may require
changes to the compiler with incompatiblities for the user.

Martin
-- 
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Martin Cracauer <cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de>  http://www.bik-gmbh.de/~cracauer
"As far as I'm concerned,  if something is so complicated that you can't ex-"
"plain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway"- Calvin
