Re: tagged types extensions - language design question

[Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com>]

On Tue, 1 Feb 2000, Matthew Heaney wrote:
> In article <38971028.BB16D8A2@earthlink.net> , Charles Hixson 
> <charleshixsn@earthlink.net>  wrote:
> > Along this line, what would be nice would be a language that merged the
> > capabilities of the dynamic binding languages [e.g., Smalltalk] and the
> > capabilities of the static binding languages [e.g., Ada].  So far the closest
> > match that I've found is Python/C, though that has a lot of limitations.
> 
> Isn't that what Objective-C tries to do?

Objective-C allows you to nail down the binding of some object types, but
doesn't come close to Ada in this regard. 

I would suggest Dylan if you want these capabilities in one language,
though pragmatically speaking the implementations aren't mature enough for 
me yet. 

Charles did mention Python/C, and that's something I've been thinking
about a lot lately; a scripting language written in Ada. Of course, one of
the reasons for the success of C as a host for scripting languages is the 
enormous base of C code out there, which Ada doesn't have. Nonetheless, a 
scripting/extension language for Ada is an appealing idea.

Dylan-over-Ada anyone? Yikes, that acronym is horrible :-)

-- Brian