Re: Dylan?

On Feb 22, 2007, at 16:13 PM, [email protected] wrote:

>     Dylan always seemed like a language with an interesting feature  
> set /
> ideology.  Does anyone [here] actually use Dylan for real-world /
> serious development?  That is, is Dylan in its current state a viable
> option or is it sufficiently outdated / unsupported that in practice
> it must be relegated to the toy language bin?  Is it equally viable on
> all three major platforms?

It's going to depend on what you're doing, of course, and will  
probably depend more on what libraries you need rather than language  
features. Dylan is alive and well, but obviously doesn't have a huge  
user base, otherwise you wouldn't be asking the question :-)

I did "real-world/serious" development for two years when I was at  
Harlequin implementing the Dylan IDE. One of my primary interests as  
a programmer is language design, and over a decade later Dylan is  
still my favorite language (although Steele's Fortress is looking  
very good).

I recommend giving it a hands-on evaluation, or at least read about  
some of the key language features:

   <http://www.opendylan.org>
   <http://www.opendylan.org/books/drm>
   <http://www.opendylan.org/books/dpg>

Both Harlequin's (Functional Developer's) and CMU's implementations  
have been open source for years and are maintained by the same group  
of people (see below), and are available on a number of platforms.

-- 
Chris Page - Dylan Programmer

  Open Source Dylan Compilers: <http://www.opendylan.org/>