Re: [Axiom-developer] Re: SPAD and Aldor again

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

C Y <address@hidden> writes:

[...]

| I guess it depends on the details of how such things are handled.  You
| are proposing to have code at the SPAD level talk directly to things
| like external libraries?

My proposal is to formally specify a way for SPAD codes to talk to
external libraries.  I don't think such an interface must necessarily
be through Lisp first.

[...]

| > All of that, including interfacing with nay reasonable language used
| > in the computational science community -- that list goes beyond
| > Fortran and C.
| 
| Indeed.  C++, Java, Python, Haskell, CAML, ML, various proof
| languages... more I'm sure that aren't leaping to mind.  You know more
| about those things than I do Gaby, so perhaps the difficulties are less
| severe than I am imagining, but I was under the impression that
| translating from one language to another is highly non-trivial. 

I'm not saying it is trivial.  However, if we must attempt only
trivial things there is little hope to make Axiom interesting.  We must be
ambitious and approximate the ideals.

| Particularly if the program is written in such a way as to assume
| communication only with other Java/C/ML/etc. programs.  Lisp's FFI
| systems are probably among the most general solutions to such problems,
| and even they have a host of issues.

Lisp interface may be a proof-of-concept, but my belief is that it
should not be the final answer.

-- Gaby