Thoughts on a New Dylan Ecosystem

http://dylanfoundry.org/2013/11/12/thoughts-on-a-new-dylan-ecosystem/

by BruceM • 13 years ago

74 16 13 years ago

rayiner2• 13 years ago

I've always lamented that Ruby and the like caught on when Dylan didn't. At a time when most dynamic languages are still struggling without multi-threading or generational garbage collection (or hell, even correct lexical scoping!), Dylan has had a very sophisticated implementation for 15 years now. Open Dylan has native compilation, type inference, native threads, a sophisticated garbage collector, etc. The other side of the coin is, unfortunately, that it's hard to maintain such a sophisticated implementation without substantial manpower. The compiler is 100kloc of well-written but complex and dense code, and the runtime library is quite complex as well. That said, the Dylan Hackers are doing some really interesting work, e.g. building an LLVM backend for the compiler, so if you have an interest in the subject it's worth checking out.

pjmlp2• 13 years ago

Yeah, if Apple hadn't ditched it, maybe it would even be Mac OS X main language instead of Objective-C.

Well, one can always dream.

mpweiher• 13 years ago

Mac OS X's main language is Objective-C because it is essentially NeXTStep 5.0 and the basic libraries were mature Objective-C libraries. I don't see how Dylan would have entered the picture.

tokenrove• 13 years ago

I always figured it sat in a bad place, at least in terms of visibility, because Lisp hackers knew about it but mostly viewed it as an unnecessary compromise (why use Dylan when you can use CL?), whereas people outside Lisp either didn't know about it, or didn't understand what all the fuss was about. Which is too bad because it's a great language.

vjoel• 13 years ago

Also: generic functions. And hygienic macros. I miss those in ruby.

skittles• 13 years ago

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.

graue2• 13 years 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.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• 13 years ago

"It's not s-expr based".

For some us, sexps are just not mentally parsed.

BruceM2• 13 years ago

You're missing the optional static typing, the multimethods, the Common Lisp-style condition system, the ability to produce native and efficient executables ...

BruceM2• 13 years 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.

codygman2• 13 years ago

Am I incorrect in assuming that Dylan is a faster and better designed ruby? At first glance that is what it appears to be.

rayiner2• 13 years ago

Dylan and Ruby aren't that similar, except to the extent of their use of "end" as a delimiter (inherited from Algol through Pascal). In Dylan, methods do not belong to objects, and can dispatch on more than one of their parameters. Ruby, on the other hand, uses more traditional Smalltalk-style OOP.

Dylan isn't necessarily better designed than Ruby (though I think it is), but rather it's less eccentric than Ruby and more targeted at static compilation. It has type declarations the compiler can use to eliminate dynamic dispatch, it has proper lexical scoping allowing variables to be allocated to registers, etc.

codygman2• 13 years ago

Thanks for the explanation! I also noticed the static typing after I posted this.

coolsunglasses• 13 years ago

Dylan is a great language but I managed to transition from Common Lisp -> Python -> Clojure -> Haskell without ever really having sufficiently good cause to use it.

I wish the hackers working on Dylan the best, but it's a hard sell with the current design. Needs something to differentiate itself (from my POV).

Thoughts on a New Dylan Ecosystem

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