Raul wrote: > so I would expect that translating data from > one environment to the other would involve > some non-trivial overhead.
Meh to overhead. This is an experiment, so let's see if it's notationally efficient, to determine whether it's worth the time making it computationally efficient. Raul wrote: > Also, some lisp data structures could not be translated directly > to J arrays, for example consider a circular list which has itself > for the "rest of the list" part. But a J representation which > preserves this "feature" would be inefficient and clumsy for > most computational tasks. I would say this will fall out of the creole "naturally". A Lisp programmer would only want to use J to express concepts that are difficult to voice in Lisp (otherwise why leave Lisp?). The only place where J is going to be more productive than Lisp is exactly where J is already productive: concisely processing large amounts of rectangular (or isomorphic-to-rectangular) data. If these are not the concepts that are difficult to voice in Lisp, then there's not much value in this experiment, and a different (non-J) language should be used for the Lisp creole. Specifically, one that specializes in the areas that Lisp finds frustrating. If, however, Lisp does find J's domain frustrating, then the only time a Lisp programmer is going to try to pass data to J for processing, is exactly when he has the kind of data J likes (but Lisp doesn't). So we don't need to build a generic interface to pass J any kind of Lisp data (e.g. circular references); we only need to build an interface to allow Lisp programmers to pass J the kind of data J likes (which, unsuprisingly, is exactly what J's API is designed to accept). That ssaid, I agree generally with this concept: > I think you would need to focus on a specific application > domain for an implementation of this sort, Because picking an application (representative of a general domain) will give focus to the experiment, and help drive design decisions. -Dan ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
