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[Tanton Gibbs]

A couple of thoughts

Syntactic Sugar - I am a big fan of minimal features.  I think that the 
idea of 10 ways to do the same thing is bad, especially, if like SQL, 
each way has different performance gains.  While syntactic sugars are 
theoretically a mapping, many times this is not the case.  We have to 
make sure that there is not a difference in performance and that each 
sugar is truly a boon and not just another neat way of doing something.  
For example, a for loop really does save time, but the common die if X 
structure is not necessarily better than if( X ) die.

JVM - I still really have problems with the idea of compiling to JVM.
First, we would be dealing with a dynamic language that is in its 
infancy.  Secondly, we would be dealing with a VM that was designed for 
a specific language, one that is not ours.  Finally, there are many 
differnt implementations of the JVM that don't conform to any standard, 
even though SUN has a standard.  The court case will hopefully straigten 
out MS, but there are still other VM manufacturers.
Here is what I recommend.  My idea is to have a platform independent 
binary object file that could be further compiled to any platform.  Not 
the idea of Just In Time compiling, and not the "C" object file idea, 
but a fully linked "slim binary" that could be compiled further to any 
platform by the compiler.  Therefore, the programmer could tell the 
intelligent editor to compile to Pentium II architecture or SUN SPARC 
arcitecture and it will be able to do both from the same binary object 
file.
Intelligent Editor - We have to be really careful with this idea, which 
is a good one.  The part we have to be careful with is not to interfere 
with the programmer.  VB is case in point, it is too restrictive towards 
mistakes.  If a variable is not declared, or the syntax is not correct 
then VB will cause enormous interference to the programmer.  I like the 
idea of a small symbol out to the side, perhaps color coordinated, to 
tell the type of error and allow the programmer to immediately fix it or 
wait until later.  However, some types of syntax errors are hard to 
catch, such as no semicolon.  Also, undeclared variables and functions 
are also hard to handle because of libraries that could be linked to.  
Keeping it compiled as you go is also a good idea, however I'm about out 
time, so I'll write back later.

Tanton

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