Re: [Axiom-developer] bootstrap Meta/Boot

[C Y]

--- Ralf Hemmecke <address@hidden> wrote:

> > Fortunately in the brave new world we seem to inhabit, there is no
> > sticking place for your objection.  You can create your own branch
> > and thus reconstruct Meta in Meta and Boot in Boot.
> 
> And whoever wants to rewrite everything is LISP should create a new 
> branch and write Axiom in Common LISP so that on the list
> 
> http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/AxiomProgramming
> 
> *only* LISP remains No BOOT, no SHOE, no SPAD.

My take on this issue is that FOR MATHEMATICAL PROGRAMMING a language
which tailors itself to that task is warranted, either SPAD or
something similar.  This will eventually be the large majority of work
in Axiom, and so the benefits of a language specifically tailored
specifically to help with writing mathematics (which is quite complex,
even by programming standards) is justified.

I outlined earlier my take on this issue, which is why I don't ignore
the bootstrapping issue as pointless.  

> I wonder, how many people would use such a system. And how many
> people would be able to maintain it.
> 
> Tim, if you are so much concered with bootstrapping, what is wrong in
> having a very small lisp machinary to get to some state where one
> could climb the abstraction ladder and define the rest in some
> (hopefully)  more human readable language?

Just IMHO, Lisp code intended for human consumption is actually fairly
readable.  Boot's output is not a good way to judge.

Cheers,
CY


      
____________________________________________________________________________________
Luggage? GPS? Comic books? 
Check out fitting gifts for grads at Yahoo! Search
http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=oni_on_mail&p=graduation+gifts&cs=bz