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Re: [Axiom-developer] Community
From: |
Gabriel Dos Reis |
Subject: |
Re: [Axiom-developer] Community |
Date: |
Sun, 20 May 2007 06:42:56 -0500 (CDT) |
On Sat, 19 May 2007, C Y wrote:
| > I however have fundamental objections to any move to burry Axiom
| > deeper into a second class build system, and second class galaxy.
|
| I may be alone in this, but I don't view Lisp as "second class." It is
| a language with a long usage history, particularly in the domain of
| problem we happen to be working on. Someone on the list described it
| as "assembly code" - that's actually not a bad thing in some
| situations, and for others (like SPAD for mathematics) Lisp is
| excellent for implementing languages to meet specific problem domains
| (I believe Paradigms of AI Programming, one of the major lisp
| references, illustrates that.)
I think I can claim the assembly language characterization and I stand
by it. For lot of people, it has become a marginal language.
Colleagues I have high estimes for recently asked me "why are you
buring your time and work in an antique language no light came from for
over half a century?".
I don't think they are ignorant; on the contrary, they have unmatched
understanding of programming languages, academic and industrial needs and
issues, educations.
Think about it: Lisp and derivatives have "own" academic institutions for over
half a century, yet...
[...]
| > Please give a thought to why we don't seem to attract new blood to
| > Axiom. It is not that it is that difficult. I've seen new blood in
| > the more challenging and difficult GCC system.
|
| GCC is very general purpose (and widely depended upon), and equally
| important perhaps it is very widely known. Without GCC free software
| as we know it wouldn't exist. That attracts attention.
I don't believe that suffices to explain it.
[...]
| Shaking our reputation as "the hard CAS" would probably do the most
| good as far as attracting people, but I'm not sure how practical that
| is.
Currently, I would think we are closer to the guys who constantly rewrite the
old stuff without making progress; that hardly attracts new blood, research
funds.
-- Gaby