Re: Pragmatic Requirements Summary : update

Could I (as a newbie/outsider) ask for clarification, or is it
premature?

--- In [email protected], "Aryeh M. Friedman"
<[email protected]> wrote:
> ...
> 1) How to seperate code from data in a clean generic paradigm
> neutral manner
>

Why?  One of the nicer aspects of LISP and FORTH (and Perl, Python,
and even xBase) is the ability to construct code on the fly and
evaluate the constructed code/expressions within the current
computation.  Admittedly this is not for beginners, but is a very
powerful (pragmatic ;-) tool for some purposes.  Introspection is
another such tool that blurs the code/data boundary.

> 
> 2) How to handle situations where the syntax/semantics of one
> paradigm clashs with that of an other
> 

The REBOL language addresses this via the concept of "dialects",
in which a structure (e.g. block) is explicitly supplied to a
handler which implements the syntax/extensions used in that part.

This makes very clear the scope and intent of the extended region.

>
> 3) Exactly where to artifically draw the line between HW ("language
> atomic") and SW (implimented "in" Pragmatic)
> 

That strikes my ear as an implementation issue rather than a
language definition issue.  A quick-bootstrap implementation (back
to the FORTH tradition again) might opt for the smallest possible
core language, with all of the rest implemented as "high-level"
definitions/extensions, while a performance-tuned implementation
might opt for highly-tweaked versions of many of the so-called
higher features.  This provokes me to the question:

  Wouldn't it be better to have a precise definition of the
  notation and semantics of language features and leave it to
  the discretion of the implementor(s) how to make the
  bootstrap-versus-performance tradeoffs?

I apologize in advance if I'm retracing old discussions with these
thoughts!

-jn-



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