RE: [Axiom-developer] Aldor and Lisp

[Page, Bill]

On Wednesday, October 19, 2005 4:40 AM Martin Rubey wrote:
> ...
> Bill Page wrote:
> > > I still think however that even improving SPAD will not 
> > > be easy.  It will require rather deep knowledge of the
> > > largely undocumented legacy code that currently implements
> > > SPAD in Axiom.
> 
> We will need this knowledge anyway to understand the 
> interpreter, I guess.
>

The interpreter and the SPAD compiler are largely separate
as is obviously since Aldor is able to substitute for SPAD.
But I agree that a deep knowledge of the interpreter is
also required for other reasons, e.g. incorporating some
of the Aldor extensions.
 
> > > It is notable I think, that the original Axiom 
> > > developers chose to re-implement SPAD as Aldor
> > > (written in C) rather than continue to make
> > > improvements to SPAD.
> 
> I'm absolutely certain that the reason for this was rather
> a political than a technical one.
>

Could you explain what makes you absolutely certain of this?
Can you cite any references to Axiom or Aldor literature?

In what sense was it "political"? Who stood to gain by such
a decision?

To me the technical reasons seem rather obvious. So please
forgive me if I seem rather skeptical.

Regards,
Bill Page.