Re: dylan availability

[Bob Kerns <rwk@crl.dec.com>]

    Date: Tue, 29 Sep 92 15:15:54 -0400
    From: twl@cs.brown.edu (Ted "Theodore" W. Leung)
    
    Bob Kerns writes:
    > But this old compiler writer thinks Dylan would be a bit easier to
    > write compilers for than a lot of them.
    
    What did you have in mind when you said this?  The only thing that I
    can think of that's a little easier is that there's trivial syntax
    analysis.  The runtime system need to be fairly complicated (if you're
    not embedding in lisp), and all the generic function and  multiple
    inheritance stuff should add complexity to a compiler.  Just look what
    happened between C and C++....

To avoid getting into a long discussion, let me just point out that you
have to read what I said.  Languages like ADA and Common Lisp impose lots
of burdens on the compiler writer which are absent in Dylan because of
its simplicity.  The point isn't that it's a whole lot easier, but rather
that they're all hard, but Dylan isn't especially hard.

The object system isn't that hard.  (I've written object systems.  Object
systems are a friend of mine.  C++ is no object system ;=).  Compared to
the overall size of a commercial-grade compiler, it's not going to be the
determinant.

One of the best advantages is that you're going to get to write the compiler
in Dylan instead of C++.  Lisp has proven to be a very good language for
writing compilers in.