From: Christian Szegedy <szegedy@...>
Date: 2002-09-29T06:09:19+09:00
Subject: Re: R (was: adding overload to ruby)

Nikodemus Siivola wrote:

> On Fri, 27 Sep 2002, Bulat Ziganshin wrote:
> 
> 
>>of course. so we give anyone choice - write efficiently compiled or
>>easily extensible dynamic code. it is right thing (IMHO)
> 
> 
> What I'd *love* would be to keep ruby dynamic as it is, and have a
> statically typed language, call it R, with a ruby-like syntax for extension
> writing:  the two should be easily interoperable and have equivalent
> builtin classes.
> 
> Now that Ruby >= (Smalltalk+Perl)/2, we need R >= (C+(C++)+Java)/3.
> A better C is what I want, I guess.
> 
> Still Wishing,
> 
>   -- Nikodemus
> 

I have similar visions, but I looked from a different direction:

I would like to have a Ruby like language which is

1) Completely reflexive (like) lisp. I.e. the whole source tree is
    stored in nicely accessible (and modifiable!) objects.

2) Optionally typed (That is, you can specify type assertions
    optionally)


If this is ready: I would write code in itself, which could compile
some parts of itself (e.g. a part of the class hierarachy) into
native code extension (parhaps over OCAML or C). The optimizer
could make use of the specified type assertions and use topdown
type interference.

The full reflexivity would mean that the langauage would act as
well its own macro as its scripting language.

Regards, Christian