[stack] Fwd: What is the status of Joy ?

I thought members of the group would be interested that the recent Cat
release has generated some interest in Joy on the comp.lang.functional
newsgroup.

Below is a question and my response. Please correct me if I am
mistaken, and share your answers so that I can properly respond on the
comp.lang.functional newsgroup.

Cheers!
Christopher
http://www.cdiggins.com

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Alex wrote:
> I found very little activity concerning Joy in the last two years, at
> least on this newsgroup.
> What is the language's status ? Is it still maintained ? Is it
> considered as superseded by something else ?
> (I've seen the Cat announcement yesterday, but as I understand it, Cat
> doesn't target the same niche (extreme simplicity, no heavy type
> inference machinery)).
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> -Alex

From: Christopher Diggins <[email protected]>
Date: Jan 29, 2007 11:05 AM
Subject: Re: What is the status of Joy ?
To:


Hi Alex,

I haven't seen much active devolpment on Joy over the last year, apart
from a few implementations that pop-up on occasison (e.g. http://
tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/concatenative/message/3033 ). The language
is quite stable, apparently having achieved its intended goals (but
this is just my impression, I could be mistaken). I know that Manfred,
is semi-retired and participates in the mailing list somewhat
sporadically.

Factor ( http://www.factorcode.org ) is another language similar to
Joy with a small and very active development community.

Cat is being developed just by myself for the time being. Having a
type system (albeit an optional one) puts it a bit apart from the
other "concatenative" languages. Cat has eliminated some of the more
powerful variable effect primitives of Joy, and distinguishes between
function types and list types (Joy doesn't have to bother).

Nonetheless it is a good question. I'll forward your post to the
concatenative newsgroup and post the response here in a couple of
days.

Cheers,
Christopher Diggins
http://www.cdiggins.com