3 ms·

I'd like to have a Dylan dialect based upon Clojure concepts (the Sequence abstraction and immutable collections being two that come to mind). It would also ne

I'd like to have a Dylan dialect based upon Clojure concepts (the Sequence abstraction and immutable collections being two that come to mind). It would also need Clojure's idea of being a hosted language to get past the lack of libraries.

graue 13y ago
As a Clojurist not familiar with Dylan, that sounds awesome, but then it also just sounds like Clojure. What does Dylan add to the mix? I'm reading their "Why Dylan?" page: http://opendylan.org/documentation/intro-dylan/why-dylan.html http://opendylan.org/documentation/intro-dylan/why-dylan.htm... and I don't see anything that makes me want to go run and install it. I'm already used to dynamic, garbage-collected, infix programming languages that can be used in a functional style. Heck, JavaScript is one. Integers and strings are objects, cool, but how does that help me prototype faster or write more maintainable code?
- TylerE 13y ago
  "It's not s-expr based". For some us, sexps are just not mentally parsed.
- BruceM 13y ago
  You're missing the optional static typing, the multimethods, the Common Lisp-style condition system, the ability to produce native and efficient executables ...
  - graue 13y ago
    > optional static typing https://github.com/clojure/core.typed https://github.com/clojure/core.typed > multimethods http://clojure.org/multimethods http://clojure.org/multimethods - also, arguably better for many use cases: http://clojure.org/protocols http://clojure.org/protocols > native and efficient executables Clojure performs much better than popular web development language implementations like Python, Ruby or Node.js. See http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/ http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/ People have found it performant on harder problems: http://clojurefun.wordpress.com/2013/03/07/achieving-awesome-numerical-performance-in-clojure/ http://clojurefun.wordpress.com/2013/03/07/achieving-awesome... And it's possible to produce executables that depend only on the JVM, which is just as easy as fully-native for deployment. I grant you the one about the Common Lisp condition system. I wasn't familiar, but reading about it (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CommonLispConditionSystem http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CommonLispConditionSystem), it does look intriguing. Apparently something inspired by it is available as a Clojure library, but the last commit was 10 months ago, and I hadn't heard of it till now: https://github.com/scgilardi/slingshot https://github.com/scgilardi/slingshot
BruceM 13y ago
We'd love to have an implementation of the functional datastructures in Dylan. This needn't even change the language definition as they could happen as a library. We just need a volunteer.

graue 13y ago

As a Clojurist not familiar with Dylan, that sounds awesome, but then it also just sounds like Clojure. What does Dylan add to the mix? I'm reading their "Why Dylan?" page: http://opendylan.org/documentation/intro-dylan/why-dylan.html http://opendylan.org/documentation/intro-dylan/why-dylan.htm... and I don't see anything that makes me want to go run and install it. I'm already used to dynamic, garbage-collected, infix programming languages that can be used in a functional style. Heck, JavaScript is one. Integers and strings are objects, cool, but how does that help me prototype faster or write more maintainable code?

TylerE 13y ago
"It's not s-expr based". For some us, sexps are just not mentally parsed.
BruceM 13y ago
You're missing the optional static typing, the multimethods, the Common Lisp-style condition system, the ability to produce native and efficient executables ...
- graue 13y ago
  > optional static typing https://github.com/clojure/core.typed https://github.com/clojure/core.typed > multimethods http://clojure.org/multimethods http://clojure.org/multimethods - also, arguably better for many use cases: http://clojure.org/protocols http://clojure.org/protocols > native and efficient executables Clojure performs much better than popular web development language implementations like Python, Ruby or Node.js. See http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/ http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/ People have found it performant on harder problems: http://clojurefun.wordpress.com/2013/03/07/achieving-awesome-numerical-performance-in-clojure/ http://clojurefun.wordpress.com/2013/03/07/achieving-awesome... And it's possible to produce executables that depend only on the JVM, which is just as easy as fully-native for deployment. I grant you the one about the Common Lisp condition system. I wasn't familiar, but reading about it (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CommonLispConditionSystem http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CommonLispConditionSystem), it does look intriguing. Apparently something inspired by it is available as a Clojure library, but the last commit was 10 months ago, and I hadn't heard of it till now: https://github.com/scgilardi/slingshot https://github.com/scgilardi/slingshot

BruceM 13y ago

We'd love to have an implementation of the functional datastructures in Dylan. This needn't even change the language definition as they could happen as a library. We just need a volunteer.