Re: [Axiom-developer] B#

[root]

Two comments. Lisp IS strongly typed. It just associates the type with
the object and not with the box (variable) it comes in. That is, it
distinguishes a TV from the box labeled TV as the type is related to
the object and not the box. Other "strongly-typed" languages don't so
once you say a box (variable) is a TV box you can't put anything else
in it.  You can spot a Box-Typed language because it forces you to
coerce your entertainment center to a TV to put it into a TV
box. Exactly why you would want to consider the TV and the box it came
in to have any fixed relationship is beyond most lispers.  
(Bad Tim slaps his own wrist for joining in another language war)

Bill's interest in B-natural could easily be grounded in BOOT code.
Taking the BOOT language as a starting point and expanding the syntax
and semantics to include the other paradigms would get us a long way
toward a B-natural compiler. Some of the ideas in the Jenks/Trager
paper are already implemented with a compiler and running code.
Expanding the syntax and the compiler are probably easier tasks
than trying to start from scratch.

Presenting a USER type that can be programmed in an extended BOOT
language is reasonable. Indeed, the experiment could eventually
influence the syntax and semantics of the Spad compiler language.
The goal is to make it easier to express mathematics. The current
syntax used by non-computational mathematicians is horribly ambiguous.

t