Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme,comp.lang.dylan
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From: kardank@ERE.UMontreal.CA (Kardan Kaveh)
Subject: Dylan, guys, Dylan.
Message-ID: <Cz4n9C.5ID@cc.umontreal.ca>
Sender: news@cc.umontreal.ca (Administration de Cnews)
Organization: Universite de Montreal
Date: Fri, 11 Nov 1994 23:43:58 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.lang.scheme:11184 comp.lang.dylan:2951

So nobody wants to acknowledge the possibility of Dylan being used as
GUILE (formerly GEL).  Now I realize GNU is boycotting Apple.

Is Dylan not being considered because it was initiated by Apple?  Would
using a non-Apple Dylan implementation, such as CMU's Mindy, as a starting
point for GUILE be a violation of this boycott?

RMS made some very good comments in his post regarding why people should
refrain from using TCL as an extension language.  However, he stopped just
short of noting that the ideal extension language would provide the
extender as much power as the original implementor had.  (I would go 
further and claim the ideal extension language would be the original
language of implementation, if it was suitable.  But that's neither here
nor there.)

Now instead of starting with Scheme and mangling it so it is no longer
Scheme (as defined by either R4RS or IEEE), why not go with a language which
provides the small size of Scheme, objects all the way down like Smalltalk,
and compilation into efficient binary like C?

Neither of the latter two points has been raised in the discussions to date.

When GUILE was announced, I suggested a Meta Object Protocol, but the
prevailing opinion was that it was overkill.  However, the idea of an
integrated object system merits consideration, I believe.  An object-oriented
extension language would be a Good Thing.

Regarding compilation, it seems to be tacitly understood that byte-compilation
is sufficient.  One of RMS's points was that people use extension languages
to write far more complex code than the designer of the language had
envisioned.  Such large pieces of code would benefit greatly from running
compiled (as opposed to byte-compiled).

It would be unfortunate to pass over a language which could be a potentially
very interesting extension language for purely political reasons.  I have
higher regard than that for GNU.  If someone can tell me why a modified
Scheme would serve better than Dylan, or why Dylan would per se be 
inappropriate as an extension language, I'd love to hear from you.  After
all, that's why I'm posting this here.

Kaveh

-- 
Kaveh Kardan
kardank@ERE.UMontreal.CA
