[Axiom-developer] bootstrap Meta/Boot

[daly]

> But does it really need so many sub-languages?

Well, that's a religious question.

Some on the wailing list feel that Meta and Boot should be recovered,
made strongly typed, and closer to the algebra language.  On the plus
side it will be claimed that these are "higher level" (or could be
made into higher level since they are really just syntactic sugar).
On the minus side Meta and Boot are languages with 3 people who read
them and no-one who writes them.

Yet others would like a single language like Aldor that implements
everything. On the plus side this would mean that there is only one
language to learn, which is reasonable. On the minus side this is a
huge task, involving reimplementing the interpreter, the compiler, the
databases, the algebra, and other machinery.

Then there is the common lisp internals, spad externals, crowd. On the
minus side the claim is made that lisp is an "assembly language".  On
the plus side, well, its lisp. You can't get any higher level language.  
Either you get it or you don't.

I firmly believe that the internals should be in common lisp. It
already is common lisp modulo some "syntactic sugar" (e.g. current
boot). Over the years I've been slowly removing this sugar and using
only common lisp.

It hardly matters. The "new world" allows everyone to do whatever
suits their mood by creating their own branch. This will eventually
undermine the whole effort rendering the language debate mute.

Tim