Boo who? (was Re: newbie question)

[Charles Hixson]

Terry Reedy wrote:

>"Luis M. Gonzalez" <luismgz at gmail.com> wrote in message 
>news:1103579296.951417.320000 at c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
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>>It is as important and "python related" as other projects
>>such as PyPy, Stackless,
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>but I think this is silly.  PyPy is an alternate implementation of Python, 
>not a different language.  Stackless is a compiled extension, like many 
>others, that works with the standard implementation or maybe still a minor 
>modification thereof.
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Where would you classify Pyrex?

Language boundaries are somewhat artificial, but Pyrex clearly doesn't 
intend to be as similar to Python as PyPy does.  Still, it's close 
enough to almost be considered a language extension.

If one wanted to bother, one could probably construct a language 
slightly more similar to Python than Pyrex, and another slightly less 
similar.  This couldn't continue forever, as the domain is discrete.  
But it could go a long!! way.  One could probably arrive at a graded 
series of languages between Python and C (probably along several 
different transformation vectors).

And slightly off to the side would be Python 2.5 and C2006 (or whatever 
year the next version is defined).  But some of the languages in the 
series would be more similar to current Python than is Python 2.5.

So.  A language is a series of specifications made at differnt times, 
and has a fuzzy surround of implementations which nearly meet the 
specifications.  And this is true even where one of the implementations 
itself is designated as the primary specification (because people will 
argue that this feature or that is wrongly implemented).

Still, even given all that, Boo is clearly outside the area that is 
Python.  (One could have a "minimal acceptable distance" which could be 
thought of as running correctly most of the programs that the core 
language would run correctly.)