7 Feb 1999 -- Gwydion Dylan is a portable, optimizing
Dylan
The current release is a "technology preview". The compiler is quite mature; the most inconvenient bugs have been stomped; and a fair amount of documentation has been written. Realistically, 2.2 could be used for learning Dylan or building command-line applications.
The Dylan programming language was designed with three goals in mind: high performance, rapid prototyping and ease of use. Recently, the Gwydion volunteers and Harlequin's Dylan team have been working a fourth goal: seamless integration of Dylan programs with existing C code.
Dylan looks a bit like Pascal, C or Java. In general, experienced programmers should be able to learn the basics in a week and pick up the rest as they go along. Novice programmers should find Dylan no harder to learn than Java (although less documentation is available). Dylan supports imperative, functional, and object-oriented programming. It also provides many LISP-like features, including multi-methods, hygienic macros, closures and optional dynamic types.
Dylan's combination of familiar syntax and advanced features make it a good choice for teaching computer science. Its emphasis on performance and sheer expressive power should appeal to application developers (at least once enough supporting tools become available). C integration, when finished, will allow the use of existing libraries and legacy code.
Current development priorities include source-level compatibility with Harlequin Dylan, improved compiler performance, and support for GUI programming using DUIM, Gtk+, Gnome and possibly KDE or Motif. Feedback and interesting patches are eagerly welcomed!
Dylan is a trademark of Apple Computer, Incorporated. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.