Re: [Axiom-developer] Re: bootstrap Meta/Boot

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:

> Now, it you know Spad, them I claim you know Boot.

Uh huh ... and if I know Lisp 1.5, I know Common Lisp and Scheme, right?
If I know Algol 60, I know CPL, BCPL, B and C? In some sense, yes, I do.
I'm simply saying that it's a tremendous burden to need to deal with
more than one or two different semantics/syntax pairs in the development
process. Hence, you have specialists, and languages that die either a
quick death or a slow death, unlike Lisp and Scheme (and Forth and APL),
which should probably be described as "living a slow life." :)

Speaking (again) of Derive, I trolled by the Texas Instruments web site
last night and they have discontinued sale of it. I'm not sure how the
inventors of it feel about that. There is something coming soon (in time
for the school year, I would hope) from TI as a successor, but there
were no details on it.

I for one am sad to see Derive go that route. I had one of the very
early HP-28S calculators, and when it finally died, I replaced it with
an HP-100 Palmtop PC with Derive 3 for DOS running in it. I've been a
Derive fan ever since.

So ... what gives a language staying power, and how should Axiom evolve
to get staying power?