A Summary of Project so far [Why ANSI CL?]

[Fare Rideau]

>: Breanndan O Nuallain

> Thanks to Dwight for his summary of developments so far.  I came in
> late so I haven't seen any discussion of why ANSI CL was chosen over
> other dialects.  Neither does Dwight mention it in his summary.

I think that CL was choosen over Scheme because
1) it was standard
2) there was a reasonable of base of software using it
3) there were people ready to code for it

The reasoning is that by the time Scheme comes
with a standard module system, LispOS in CL would be finished.

Now. I also happen to like Scheme.
My plan is that a Kernel Lisp would serve as an efficient common backend
for both CL and Scheme. Designing the Kernel Lisp as a whole should not
be longer than adding a module system to Scheme, and we could also
fix some problems with Scheme, by having linear and/or immutable types
[many people would, for instance, appreciate linearity of continuations].

Of course, according to The Law of the Internet, "running (free) code wins",
if you come up with something that works with Scheme on top,
everyone will back you up. For instance, there are many people
considering RScheme as a serious solution now;
stealing code additional code from Scsh, Guile, STk and MzScheme.
could make a kick-ass system from that.
Plus RScheme could be ported to Flux, too.

So again, I propose that instead of arguing with each other,
people would group into a CL-env list, a Scheme-env list,
a KLisp list, an PStore list, a versioning-OOFS list, etc.
i.e. better 5 groups working in competition/cooperation
rather than 1 group arguing to hell.

I have already proposed to move talk for a Kernel Lisp
and/or for a Persistent Store on tunes-lll@ens.fr
(the two are rather deeply related,
though they could also be done separately).

== Fare' -- rideau@ens.fr -- Franc,ois-Rene' Rideau -- DDa(.ng-Vu~ Ba^n ==
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