Re: [Axiom-developer] Lisp

[William Sit]

Bill:

As I read your quoted passage and comments, it occurs to 
me (disclaimer: I am not a language expert, so take my 
comments with a large grain of salt) that the even more 
important statement to be emphasized is: "We can layer 
these languages on top of each other and create a language 
for writing web-based trading applications" where instead 
of "trading" we can replace it with Axiom or mathematical. 
After all I find that each category and domain in Axiom is 
a DSL (domain specific language) that the founders "layer 
these languages on top of each other to create a language" 
for new DSLs. That is what contributed to Axiom's problem 
solving power in mathematics. The underlyling lisp is just 
the foundation that allows the bootstrap and maybe 
streamlining some foundational operations. Lisp is of 
course important, but I imagine if there were a Tim-twin 
who favors another foundational language other than lisp, 
Axiom could be built on that as well. (In some way, FOAM 
can be considered as one such foundational language for 
Aldor.)

But as a simple user of Axiom, the most important thing 
for me is that "it works."

William


On Mon, 3 Mar 2008 13:41:07 -0500
 "Bill Page" <address@hidden> wrote:
> Tim,
>
> Did you actually read this article? In fact the article 
> contains the
> specific reason why you should *not* be converting BOOT 
> code to Lisp:
> (my emphasis ** ** below):
>
> ---------
>
> ...
>
> Domain Specific Languages
>
> In this article we've already encountered two domain 
> specific
> languages: Ant (specific to dealing with project builds) 
> and our
> unnamed mini-language for dealing with to-do lists. The 
> difference is
> that Ant was written from scratch using XML, an XML 
> parser, and Java
> while our language is embedded into Lisp and is easily 
> created within
> a couple of minutes.
>
> We've already discussed the benefits of DSLs, mainly why 
> Ant is using
> XML, not Java source code. **Lisp lets us create as many 
> DSLs as we
> need for our problem.** We can create domain specific 
> languages for
> creating web applications, writing massively multiplayer 
> games, doing
> fixed income trading, solving the protein folding 
> problem, dealing
> with transactions, etc. We can layer these languages on 
> top of each
> other and create a language for writing web-based trading 
> applications
> by taking advantage of our web application language and 
> bond trading
> language. Every day we'd reap the benefits of this 
> approach, much like
> we reap the benefits of Ant.
>
> Using DSLs to solve problems results in much more 
> compact,
> maintainable, flexible programs. In a way we create them 
> in Java by
> creating classes that help us solve the problem. The 
> difference is
> that Lisp allows us to take this abstraction to the next 
> level: we're
> not limited by Java's parser. Think of writing build 
> scripts in Java
> itself using some supporting library. Compare it to using 
> Ant. Now
> apply this same comparison to every single problem you've 
> ever worked
> on and you'll begin to glimpse a small share of the 
> benefits offered
> by Lisp.
>
> -------
>
> BOOT is just another DSL. Writing Axiom internals in BOOT 
> does not
> mean that we are no longer use Lisp, rather it means we 
> are simply
> using Lisp in the way it was intended to be used.
>
> Regards,
> Bill Page.
>
> On 3/3/08, address@hidden 
> <address@hidden> wrote:
> > I'd encourage you to spend a few minutes reading
> >  http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/lisp.html
> >
> >  It is a gentle introduction to the reason why I'm 
> > moving
> >  all of the internal code to common lisp.
> >
> >  Tim
>
>
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William Sit, 
Professor of Mathematics, City College of New York 
                
Office: R6/202C Tel: 212-650-5179, Fax: 212-862-0004
Home Page: http://scisun.sci.ccny.cuny.edu/~wyscc/