From: Paul Brannan <pbrannan@...>
Date: 2002-09-13T23:19:47+09:00
Subject: Re: Multimethods (was Re: Larry Wall's comments on Ruby)

On Fri, Sep 13, 2002 at 02:22:22PM +0900, Mike Lucius wrote:
> Sorry, I meant the syntax is ugly.  You're right the resulting code is
> fast. However, I can hardly read the stuff and I have no trouble
> understanding Perl :) I think extending C++ is useless, its
> overextended now. I've been looking for alternatives to C++, by which
> I mean a type-safe compiled(fast) language that has al or most of the
> goodies I like about Ruby.  The best I've found so far is OCaml (
> http://www.ocaml.org ), the biggest drawback to OCaml is that it is
> not very popular.

The advantage of extending C++ is that you get backward-compatibility
with existing code, without having to write a whole bunch of wrappers.

One of the speakers at the 2002 ACCU conference suggested that this is
why C++ is so popular; it allowed people to gradually move away from C.
He introduced a new language, Felix (http://felix.sourceforge.net),
which happens to be written in OCaml.  I don't think it has enough
critical mass to become popular, but I think it's a step in the right
direction.

Sather (http://www.gnu.org/software/sather/) also looks interesting, but
I haven't done much with it.

Paul