Popular conceit about learning programming languages

[Alex Martelli]

Pascal Costanza wrote:

> Alex Martelli wrote:
>> Pascal Costanza wrote:
>>    ...
>>>(All the scripting languages I have seen so far rely on C for the hairy
>>>stuff - and I definitely don't like that. There should be some
>>>alternative.)
>> 
>> There is.  Jython, www.jython.org, is an implementation of the Python
>> language in and for Java -- complete, working, and quite solid.
> 
> Ah, yes, of course. But you don't want to suggest that Java is a
> language that is useful for doing hairy and complex stuff. (Sure, most

More productive than C, at any rate; and we see oodles of "hairy
and complex stuff" done mostly in C and fairly well too.


> things become hairy and complex in Java, but that's a totally different
> story. ;)
> 
> I mean, Python is already more advanced than Java.

Oh, I agree with this, but that's not the point.


> As I said before, Python could be a good surface language for Common
> Lisp. Something like Dylan was. The original idea in Lisp was to provide
> the so-called M-expressions one day, but that never turned out to be
> accepted by Lispers. I think the problem with M-expressions or Dylan is
> that these were completely new languages. Choosing an already existing
> language (for example Python) could be the better choice because it is
> already accepted (and proven to work in practice). Of course, that
> language should already be close to Common Lisp, but I don't see any
> major problems in that regard with Python.

An interesting consideration, yes.


> Another motivation is as follows: I think the basic idea of .NET (or
> better the CLR) is quite interesting, i.e. to have a common portable
> runtime that can be used by many different languages. However, the

I fully agree with this.

> design of the CLR is still very limited (it is slightly more open than
> the JVM, and that's what Microsoft wants .NET to be compared against,
> although they don't admit it publicly). For example, the CLR has only a
> limited object model that is hard to target from languages that want to
> include interesting features like multiple inheritance or multi-methods.

Yes, a fair assessment.


> So my main vision is to turn Common Lisp into such a kind of common
> runtime for various languages. That's one reason why I started the JVM
> implementation in Common Lisp.
> 
> Does this make some sense?

Sure.

> P.S.: I know that this sounds like a major undertaking. ;)

Not just "sounds" -- surely IS.  But so what -- major undertakings
do sometimes succeed, after all!-)


Alex