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A vision for Parrot

A.M. Kuchling akuchlin at ute.mems-exchange.org
Wed Nov 6 12:46:09 EST 2002 
In article <3DC8CDDD.7050103 at mindspring.com>,
	Andrew Dalke wrote:
> It didn't happen.  Writing those translators are hard because each
> of the languages has different object models, which must be implemented
> nearly perfectly.  Guile is a full-fledge language built on years of

There's also the problem of motivation: who's going to write those
translators?  

    Tcl and Python programmers?  They have nicely usable
    implementations already.  Translation to Guile would buy them
    nothing, except for having to rewrite every single C extension.

    Guile programmers?  If they're Guile programmers, they must like 
    programming in Scheme.  Why would they work on translators for languages
    they'll never use?

A Guile programmer might write a Python translator out of pure
bloody-minded evangelism, of course, but it would require supernatural
determination to continue *maintaining* it for the long-term, and
there would still be the risk that the outside community would look at
the translator and ignore it, saying (it's too slow | it doesn't run
extension X that I really need | Guile doesn't run on my platform).
Similar arguments can applied to translators to Parrot, of course.

--amk                                                             (www.amk.ca)
ABBESS: In food, in sport, and life-preserving rest 
 To be disturbed would mad man or beast.
      -- _The Comedy of Errors_, V, i
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