Re: dylan availability

[alms@cambridge.apple.com]

> I would like to know what OS platforms and processors Dylan will be
> available on. Dylan will be available for Newton, but will you also be able
> to use it for developing applications for the Mac Plus, Quadra, and
> PowerBooks? How about Windows, Windows NT, UNIX?

Hmmm... No one else bit, so I'll say the little that I can.

Although Apple hasn't announced any plans for releasing Dylan as
a product, we have said that we would like Dylan to be available
for as many computing platforms as possible.  We aren't targeting it
as a niche language, but as a general purpose language.

So, the answer to your question really depends on how successful
we are.  If we're successful, the answer will be "every platform
and every processor".

> Have other companies announced plans for Dylan implementations? I know of
> the DEC "Thomas" implementation written in Scheme, but haven't heard of
> others.

No other companies have announced plans.

> Also, if there are any estimates on time (man months) and other costs for
> implementing Dylan on a given processor or OS platform I would be
> interested in hearing from you. I realize this is a bit vague, but Dylan
> was designed to run on machines with limited resources, so there are a lot
> of opportunities to use Dylan (instead of C or Assembler) with existing and
> upcoming processors and specialized chips if the development time isn't too
> long.

This really depends on what kind of implementation you want.  The
Thomas compiler took four people four weeks, I believe (perhaps a bit
less than that).  An optimizing native-code compiler with a first-rate
development environment would take many person-years of implementation
effort.

  -Andrew