Newsgroups: comp.lang.dylan
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!udel!gatech!ncar!uchinews!uchinews.uchicago.edu!converse
From: converse@cs.uchicago.edu (timoshenko)
Subject: Re: Dylan Competitive Analysis: Dylan vs. SmalltalkAgents?
In-Reply-To: sef@CS.CMU.EDU's message of 1 Mar 1995 22:25:31 GMT
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Date: Thu, 2 Mar 1995 18:59:39 GMT
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In article <3j2s8r$ohh@cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu> sef@CS.CMU.EDU (Scott Fahlman) writes:
   In article <13808.9503011536@subnode.aiai.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.edinburgh.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:

      I would have thought the same would apply to the various kinds of
      Lisp.  But no.  Dylan is promoted in part by talking against Lisp.

   Only when arguing with people who stubornly insist that Dylan should
   be considered a dialect of Lisp.  Then we have to say what we think is
   different and why we are choosing to do some things differently.

   -- Scott

This connects to a question I had while reading a recent version
of the Dylan FAQ.  One question-and-answer, in its entirety, is:

>[2-8] Is Dylan designed to be a replacement for Common Lisp?

>No.  We see Common Lisp and Dylan filling two distinct needs.

So what are the distinct needs? 

The reason I ask is that my central interest in Dylan is the hope of a
Lisp-like language that can produce small applications.  For example,
if there were a version of Macintosh Common Lisp (which I love as a
development environment) that could produce small run-time images I
would be completely happy (and probably correspondingly less
interested in Dylan).

I understand that Dylan is not a dialect of Lisp, and that the 
Dylan designers have other goals in addition to the distinction
between development and run-time environments.  But I'm curious
how the needs addressed by Dylan and CL differ, if only because
(with one large exception) CL addresses my needs quite nicely.

	--Tim Converse
--
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Tim Converse  U. of Chicago CS Dept.  converse@cs.uchicago.edu  (312) 702-8584
