Dylan rather than CL -- why?

[Stavros Macrakis <macrakis@osf.org>]

fhd@panix.com (Frank Deutschmann) said:

   >    ...where the target hardware can support it, it is nice to
   >    have at least some of the development environment present, to
   >    allow end-user programming and live system debugging.

I replied:

   > Ah, but here you're pulling the whole environment back in....

Deutschmann continued:

   ... debugging an active production system can be even more
   useful/important....

The issue is not whether it should be possible to have a development
environment in the running system when you DO want it.  (Which I agree
is useful in many circumstances.)  I think that's a given.  The issue
is whether it should be possible to have a running system WITHOUT a
development environment when you DON'T want it.  The latter is not
possible if you don't make a clean distinction between development
environment and execution environment, while making such a clean
distinction doesn't hurt in the other case.

Also, to reply to another point, if you want a standard development
environment, you can certainly define one without building it into the
language, just as you can define a standard linear-programming package
or a standard graphic-interface package (although of course its
implementation is much more closely linked to the language
implementation than these examples).  There are surely a lot of areas
where standard interfaces are desirable.  In fact, I could go through
the arguments why that is more important than standardization of
development environments if it's not obvious.

	-s