From: Nikodemus Siivola <tsiivola@...>
Date: 2002-09-29T20:40:27+09:00
Subject: Re: R


On Sun, 29 Sep 2002, Mauricio Fern�ndez wrote:

>  * be compiled: at the beginning simple translation to C would make it

Definitely.

>  * be less dynamic than Ruby: closed classes.
>    That way method lookup would be faster.

Hear, hear!

>  * have no GC, or at least have one separed from Ruby's main one.
>    Important as the object model would be different.

Hmm. I would personally be loath to not have a GC.

>  * have lower-level classes (perhaps as literal values) for low-level
>    arrays and such stuff, thus having C-like types wrapped in real
>    classes (otherwise we end up with C w/ different syntax)

Hmm. One thing I would really like to keep is "everything is an object".

>  * perhaps be statically typed? (but types could be inferred so it feels
>    more like Ruby, by not having to declare them always)

Definitely. Implicit tyoping is propably the way to go where variables are
conserned. OTOH I would think that having only one return type per method,
and knowing that and the argument typed when compiling we could drop
variable typing.

So:

def Float square(Float x)
  x*x # Implicit returns are nice, for one liners' at least.
end

a = 2.0 # Need a literal float here? Or do we cast?
b = (square a).to_s # We know b will be a String.

> It could also be procedural (not OOP), but being able to create classes

Hmm. I was definitely thinking OO. For first draft maybe without
inheritance, to sidestep all the method lookup issues and avoid complexity
in the beginning.

>  * allowing generic programming (so we don't miss Ruby's dynamic
>    typing too much)

What do you mean by this? Like so?

def Boolean compare(Comparable a, Comparable b)
  a == b
end



> Things to throw away:

>  * high-level classes such as Array, Hash, Class, etc (in fact (almost)
>    all of Ruby's!)

The existence of Class would depend on the class model, but getting rid of
Array and Hash sounds like a bad idea: the lack of such is 90% of the pain
of C.

  -- Nikodemus