Dialect, A Python derived environment (and language ?)

[Stephan Houben]

On Thu, 23 Sep 1999 08:52:27 +0200, Ionel Simionescu <ionel at psy.uva.nl> wrote:
>Hi,
>
>It seems that Python got a child.
>(Nice feature: makes an exe right away.)
>
>###
>Aristar Dialect Standard Edition is an advanced programming system for
>Windows 9x/NT and CE that allows developers to write applications with the
>following features:
>
>Cross-platform code.
>
It's clear that some people have a different idea of what "cross-platform"
constitutes than Guido...

Apparently, three different versions of Windows is cross-platform.
I guess that my "Hello, world" in assembler is also cross-platform then,
since it runs on both Linux 2.0-X86 and 2.2-X86.

Anyway, the documentation they make available is in some .doc format,
and it doesn't look very appetizing when run through "strings", so

But I managed to get some code from it anyhow, for your amusement:

Class base
    refCount = 0     // Shared data
    __init__ = func()
        refCount = refCount + 1
        message("Base class constructor")
    endfunc
    __del__ = func()
        refCount = refCount - 1
        message("Base class destructor")
    endfunc
EndClass
Class vehicle(base)  // Vehicle inherits from base
    __init__ = func(make)
        inherited.__init__()  // Not required
        this.make = make
        message("Constructing a " + make)
    endfunc
    __del__ = func()
        message("Destructing a " + this.make)
    endfunc
    getMake = func()
        return this.make
    endfunc
EndClass

It looks indeed as some heavily bastardized Python.
Note the inconsistency in keyword capitalization!
Class <-> EndClass versus func <-> endfunc 

Also the "<name> = func()" notation is pretty ugly (sic),
if you want my humle (hah!) opinion.

Well, enough ranted for today. Back to real work...

Greetings,

Stephan