From: ······@informatik.uni-hamburg.de (Rainer Joswig)
But I wonder why they have chosen Dylan for their new project.
Isn't Dylan a language developed by Apple for their
needs (prototyping, development, ...). Apple has surely the most
influence on the language design and they certainly want to
keep control. So Dylan seems to be a closed language and
its main purpose is commercial.
I'll be posting more detail on the Igor project very soon. But to
answer your question:
1. The Igor project aims at developing a tool for delivery of mainstream
applications, so the practical orientation of Dylan fits our own goals
almost perfectly. We sketched out the language we wanted to use before we
ever heard of Dylan, and the match was very close.
2. The involvement of a "real" company, and the interest in Dylan from
other "real" companies in the U.S., makes Dylan more attractive to the
people at ARPA, not less. They're very much concerned these days that
projects like Igor have a real-world commercial impact and a good plan for
moving our results into industry.
3. Before we got into this, we had a long talk with the Dylan people at
Apple. They (wisely) are eager to make Dylan more open and available on
non-Apple platforms, and welcome our involvement. So far, they have been
quite willing to listen to our input on the design. I'm not sure that
we could have had a similar influence on Eulisp.
-- Scott
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Scott E. Fahlman Internet: ····@cs.cmu.edu
Senior Research Scientist Phone: 412 268-2575
School of Computer Science Fax: 412 681-5739
Carnegie Mellon University Latitude: 40:26:33 N
5000 Forbes Avenue Longitude: 79:56:48 W
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
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In article <············@cs.cmu.edu> ···@sef-pmax.slisp.cs.cmu.edu writes:
3. Before we got into this, we had a long talk with the Dylan people at
Apple. They (wisely) are eager to make Dylan more open and available on
non-Apple platforms
The question is, can you (and we!) be sure you aren't being suckered
in this deal - today Apple engineers are eager to make Dylan open and
available, but tomorrow the Apple management says "Thanks for all the
work, now this is all Apple property and you can't have a language
that looks like Dylan (or that uses implementation technique A or data
structure B which we have just patented) unless you pay us $$$ or run it
only on our hardware."
Given Apple's history, we have to ask you if you have any protection
against this happening. Personal assurances from people who don't
have the final say are no protection at all.
--
Lou Steinberg
uucp: {pretty much any major site}!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!lou
internet: ···@cs.rutgers.edu
···@sef-pmax.slisp.cs.cmu.edu writes:
>1. The Igor project aims at developing a tool for delivery of mainstream
>applications, so the practical orientation of Dylan fits our own goals
>almost perfectly. We sketched out the language we wanted to use before we
>ever heard of Dylan, and the match was very close.
Since EuLisp and Dylan are fairly similar (so far), EuLisp would
presumably have been at least a moderately good match.
>3. Before we got into this, we had a long talk with the Dylan people at
>Apple. They (wisely) are eager to make Dylan more open and available on
>non-Apple platforms, and welcome our involvement. So far, they have been
>quite willing to listen to our input on the design. I'm not sure that
>we could have had a similar influence on Eulisp.
I think you could have, although the Atlantic gets in the way
more than one might think. (E-mail can be slower, it's harder
to arrange common meetings, etc.)
However, if you'd come along and said you wanted to develop a
high-quality implementation of a language suitable for mainstream
applications, and you were considering using EuLisp, but to make it
work certain changes would be required, I think the EuLisp folk would
have been fairly receptive. I certainly would have been.
In any case, the EuLisp process was fairly open, and since the
number of people was smaller EuLisp was earier to influence than
CL.
-- jd