From: Tyler Zesiger Date: 2004-06-11T12:16:22+09:00 Subject: Re: [OT] Re: Unit tests ... not just for the young Oh yeah, I forgot to mention Haskell. I liked what I read about it, but after reading the objectives on Haskell, it seems a bit too "head in the clouds" for me. I may revisit it later, along with the other languages I mentioned. Ocaml does have quite a buzz around it, I've noticed that too. Just curious - If you're doing Ruby, why bother with Python? And if you're doing Scheme, why bother with Lisp? Nicholas Van Weerdenburg wrote: > Thanks for the indepth reply. > > Ocaml also seems to have an interesting buzz, and does well on > programming contests. It looked sortof weird to me. The other language I > hear of a lot is Haskell. Modula-3 I have know very little about, and > see little mention of. > > So, for now it's Ruby, Emacs Lisp, Scheme, Python for me, in that > order. I'll defintely spend a few hours checking out Dylan and seeing > if it bumps the mix. I agree with you Scheme assessment- I have no real > reason to learn it, but it's just cool, different, and fun. > > Nick > > Tyler Zesiger wrote: > >> Ruby and Dylan kind of remind me of each other. They were both >> conceived at about the same time. Dylan is designed to be a >> "production" language, capable of replacing C/C++. I'm just barely >> getting into it, but I liked it better than Eiffel, and it seems to >> have a great future even though it's largely ignored so far. It >> consistently ranks well in the ICFP lanugages contest - >> http://www.cis.upenn.edu/proj/plclub/contest/ - But as far as I know, >> there's not much production code written using Dylan. >> >> Apple had financial troubles and dropped the Dylan project. Bob Dylan >> won millions of dollars out of a lawsuit over the fact that Dylan was >> distributed on a CD with the word "Dylan" on the front. And Dylan >> seems to be only now catching up to where it should have been in the >> mid 1990's. >> >> Anyways, Dylan, Ruby, and Scheme are the languages I've decided to be >> worthwhile, in that order (Besides C/C++ of course). They seem to be >> the best designed languages out there, without being too obscure or >> immature. All three of them are ready for production. Dylan doesn't >> have a lot of libraries available for it yet, but it can use C >> libraries, so it's not a huge issue. Ruby can work with C as well, >> through SWIG, so it's not a show stopper for Ruby either. >> >> Dylan currently has two compilers available, and they both generate C >> code before using another compiler to produce an executable binary, so >> compilation times will be really slow until the last C compilation >> step is eliminated. >> >> One of them is called Functional Developer, or just FunDev for short, >> and it's a Windows only ex-commercial product that depends on MSVC for >> it's final C compilation step. FunDev will probably be open-sourced >> soon. Gwydion Dylan is the open source compiler that's available, and >> it'll run on anything that's *nix, as well as windows with some extra >> work through Cygwin or MinGW. It depends on GCC for it's final C >> compilation step. >> >> The #dylan channel on the freenode IRC network is quite active, but >> there's only about 15 to 20 people in it at any given time, with a >> spike in activity every time Dylan gets slasdotted. I first found out >> about Dylan through slashdot. >> >> So, to sum up, I'm still digging deeper, but I suspect Dylan and Ruby >> will be what I will use most, with maybe some Scheme thrown in when >> it's convenient. Other languages that are interesting, but I doubt I >> will use are Eiffel, Ocaml, and Modula-3. I've decided to ignore those >> just because Dylan and Ruby cover the spectrum pretty well by >> themselves, for production code. Scheme is the "fun" language that I >> can twiddle with when I get around to it. Maybe I'll change my mind >> later, but that's my thinking so far. >> >> Any other languages will probably have to be backwards compatible with >> C or C++, as Dylan and Ruby are, before I'll give them any heed, since >> I'm mostly interested in languages that are ready to work. >> >> >> >> Nicholas Van Weerdenburg wrote: >> >>> No I haven't. Eiffel and Dylan are two other languages I've noted >>> floating in the zeitgeist as worth exploring. I'm mainly focusing on >>> Ruby and Emacs Lisp at the moment. I tried Smalltalk via Squeak, but >>> found Squeak very bizarre, so I moved onto lisp/scheme for amusement >>> for now. Actually, Ruby blocks as an example of >>> higher-order-functions led me through about six hours of reading >>> ruby-python discussions, which led me to lisp comparisions, which >>> lead to scheme, etc. Hyperlinks are evil :). That said, Ruby does >>> seem to be a truly inspired melding all the different language >>> capabilities. >>> >>> Has Dylan ever been used for production software? >>> >>> Nick >>> >> >> ...( rest of replieds removed) > > > > >