Re: [Axiom-developer] Re: noweb / Lisp Skills

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

Martin Rubey <address@hidden> writes:

[...]

| And I'm absolutely certain that I don't want to understand how noweb works. No
| matter whether it is coded in Lisp, Aldor or C.

Hear! Hear! Hear!

Martin has a very good summary.  Many reserachers and potential
contributors out there are not interested in learning Lisp just to be
able to use Axiom, which already requires its own language.  That make
the number of people capable to maintaining and evoling the
interperter already very small.

Lisp has been out for over half a century.  It did not take over the
world.  I don't know why; but that is food for thought.

| Things to do on the interpreter side needed for the axiom-combinat project:
| 
| * make it understand Aldor:
| 
|   * dependent types

Does not Axiom already user dependent type?  Do you have something
specific in mind?

|   * extend
|   * creating domains on the command line
| 
| * separate the mathematical knowledge about the domains from the interpreter,
|   possibly incorporate ideas of Nic Doye

Have a look at work done on dependent types.  There was a nice talk
this year at POPL (Charleston, SC).

      http://www.e-pig.org/


No, I'm not proposing to write Axiom in Haskell.  But, I'm suggesting
we don't ignore the work done in the programming language community. 

-- Gaby