Building Your Own Dynamic Language

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theoh · 2014-10 · Recommendation

Well, in terms of whether the example is a well-posed question, a networked window system isn't too different from the WWW, which as we know by now works pretty flawlessly. Perhaps the key contrast here is between the tendency toward static mathematical perfection of the APL family and the notion of dynamic languages for building systems that Alan Kay et al would propose. "APL is like a beautiful diamond - flawless, beautifully symmetrical. But you can’t add anything to it. If you try to glue on another diamond, you don’t get a bigger diamond." --Joel Moses There's a talk by Ian Piumarta that tries to get to the core of what the VPRI guys feel is important. I'm not sure about it but it seems worth mentioning in this context: Ian Piumarta "Building Your Own Dynamic Language" [VIDEO] Also, this: [LINK]

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wedesoft · 2014-04 · Recommendation

No big deal. Just become an expert then. It is not that hard. Just have a look at Ian Piumarta's work [1,2]. Future systems will probably facilitate programming on every level from the bare metal to the highest abstraction. I.e. no strict boundaries between the implementation of the application and the implementation of the compiler/interpreter. [1] [LINK] [2] [VIDEO] EDIT: There are other reasons to write machine code than performance.

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andreyf · 2009-09 · Recommendation

Thanks for the link, it's a good read. Ian gave a talk on the same material at Stanford ( [VIDEO] ). The paper about the object model ( [LINK] ) is also very useful. The hallmark of COLA is recursive design, which sort of makes it more like Smalltalk than Lisp Late binding is certainly a big part of the smalltalk philosophy as well, and recursive design is a great way of implementing late binding. A system uses the same "user interface" internally, it certainly makes it easier to let people modify the internals. The big difference I see between Smalltalk and Lisp (correct me if I'm wrong) is that Lisp systems tend to use compile-time abstractions Lisp->machine code->execution, while Smalltalkers from early on started thinking about interpretation and VM's - using abstractions which require run-time data to make decisions.

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