Re: Ada and JVM? Why not AdaVM?

[Ray Blaak <blaak@infomatch.com>]

"Tarjei T. Jensen" <tarjei.jensen@kvaerner.com> writes:
> Ronald Cole wrote in message ...
> >Last time I checked, the emacs "vm" was a lisp interpreter.  Why would
> >anyone want an Ada to emacs-lisp translator?
> 
> To write Emacs code in Ada of course.

A noble sentiment, but largely impractical.

To do anything real in Emacs one tends to need a substantial understanding of
Elisp anyway. Having Ada as an intermediate layer is just artificial work.

The main benefit Ada provides is to provide strong static type checking. Elisp
has essentially zero static typing. It is completely dynamic with no lexical
scoping.

E.g.

  (defvar greetings "Hi there")

  (defun show-message () (message greetings))

  (defun show-message-from-inside ()
    (let ((greetings "Hi from inside"))
      (show-message)))

Executing show-message-from-inside causes the string "Hi from inside" to be
displayed in Emac's message line. A lexically scoped language would display
"Hi there".

Interfacing to a library implemented in Elisp would be a challenge, to say the
least.

-- 
Cheers,                                        The Rhythm is around me,
                                               The Rhythm has control.
Ray Blaak                                      The Rhythm is inside me,
blaak@infomatch.com                            The Rhythm has my soul.