> > <snip all this>
The discussion about programming languages for X is largely a rehash of discussions that are inherently non-convergent . The language syntax and semantics tends to be pointless from a particular advanced standpoint, which is that if you want to design a language to do some task T, you can design that language L and implement it. The language that provides the underpinning for that implementation could be almost anything, but for prototyping and maybe for final implementation, Lisp seems to be very convenient. Some people prefer C or C++, but that's because they don't know Lisp (reminder; this is posted on Sage-flame). Then there is the run-time support, language optimization, data-structure and memory allocation hacks. These cannot always be done in Lisp, and so parts are written in assembler or C. Some Lisp implementations are largely or completely done via translation to C. or have C runtime routines. Some programs become so tied to their own unique style of memory or data structure that they cannot be interfaced with other languages without expensive conversions at the interfaces. Sometimes this uniqueness buys special efficiencies. I hope that's what Bill Hart is doing. But the language -- should it be Python, Ruby, Julia, C, C++, Fortran 90, Lisp, JavaScript (ECMA) or the new languages proposed by Microsoft, Google, Apple ... the discussion predictably will not converge. Better and better implementations of Lisp compete too. After all, if an algorithm precisely can be expressed in a high level way, a "good enough" compiler should be able to produce extremely efficient code. RJF -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
