"FL" == Fredrik Lundh <fredrik@pythonware.com> writes:
FL> as reported on slashdot: FL> http://www.perl.com/pub/1999/09/topaz.html FL> (topaz is also the code name for our "rewrite FL> Tkinter in Python", but that's another story ;-) Here's an interesting quote: When I was trying to figure out how to be persuasive on this subject, I finally realized that Perl may be competing with Java in the problem space, but when you're writing Perl, implementing the Perl runtime, really what you're doing is something equivalent to writing a JVM. You're writing the equivalent of a Java Virtual Machine. Now, would you write a JVM in Eiffel? I don't think so. No, so neither would you write the Perl runtime in Java or in Eiffel. In the context of Python, I disagree that it competes against Java; Python makes a nice complement to Java. And I obviously also think it makes perfect sense to write (a) Python runtime in Java, as JimH has so effectively proven. Another interesting tidbit we've addressed here: Was the syntax appropriate for declaring variables to give appropriate hints to a hypothetical compiler? That is to say MY INT $X or MY STR $Y -- and I thought that the INT and the STR and the NUM should be suffixes, something like MY $X:NUM-and, in fact, that suffix syntax is something that Larry officially has blessed, but just not for this purpose. -Barry