Re: [Axiom-developer] Re: OpenAxiom-1.2.1 released

[Scott Morrison]

As Dick Jenks explained it to me when I joined the Axiom project in 1984, the Boot language was intended as a boot-strap step to eventually implement the entire system in the Spad language.  The idea was first to convert to a language that was syntactically similar to Spad, then convert it to actually use Spad.  Of course the second step never happened.  That's why the language was named Boot.

While Boot does have the semantics of Lisp, to me, the distinguishing feature is it's very nice syntax for list pattern matching.  You can do the same things in Lisp, but the syntactic elegance of Boot for pattern matching is undeniable.  It was so nice that we got away without real structured data throughout the entire project.  I love the syntax:

-- Scott

On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 2:22 PM, Gabriel Dos Reis <address@hidden> wrote:

On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 12:38 PM,  <address@hidden> wrote:
>> As I understand it, you could easily prevent forking by pushing Axiom to
>> user more actively, it could have the functionality of OpenAxiom or FriCAS,
>> but it has lost the momentum. From user point of view the confusion is
>> of no importance as long as one of fors works and another one does not.
>
> Aleksej,
>
> As I understand it, one fundamental difference between OpenAxiom and Axiom
> lies in the project goals related to the boot language. Approximately half
> of the Axiom internals is written directly in common lisp. The other half
> is written in a "syntactic sugar language", called boot, which compiles to
> common lisp.
>
> The Axiom project had, since it was released as open source, the
> stated goal of removing the boot language code. Indeed, this was a
> goal I had while working on Axiom before it was ever released from IBM
> in the late 80s.
>
> The OpenAxiom project has the exact opposite goal of writing everything
> in boot and developing boot as a language.

Tim is almost right -- OpenAxiom aims to move away from Lisp as implementation
language.  That goal of OpenAxiom is in line with the original AXIOM project
(which led to A#, then Aldor).  I have it from first hand the original project
wasn't meant to be written entirely in Lisp.  However, that was an issue of
occasional debate.  I suspect that will continue for the foreseeable future.
By the way, the Boot in OpenAxiom is inaccurately described as
a syntactic sugar for Common Lisp.

>
> Given that the goals of OpenAxiom are directly opposed to the stated
> project goals of Axiom, how do you see that this difference should be
> resolved?
>
> Tim
>


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