
Plot: A Programming Language for Old Timers (2009) - tosh
http://users.rcn.com/david-moon/PLOT/
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mepian
There is a newer version here: [http://users.rcn.com/david-
moon/PLOT3/](http://users.rcn.com/david-moon/PLOT3/)

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tosh
wow, thanks for the pointer!

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arethuza
As an aside - I clicked on one of the links and the page changed so quickly
that I initially assumed something had gone wrong!

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masukomi
amazing what happens when you throw out all the excessive JS and CSS isn't it.
;)

People complain about the web being slow but it's not the web, or web
browsers. It's all the crap we've shoved into web sites that they just don't
need.

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FabHK
Not sure I read this correctly (and I know nothing about LISP), but this seems
to support multiple dispatch (ie method selection based on the types of all
function arguments)?

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linfocito
Yes, it supports multiple dispatch. And so does CLOS (Common Lisp Object
System)

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nickik
This is such a cool language. The Macro system is really interesting. Its a
mostly like Dylan (Common Lisp + CLOS, Basic Syntax) but with Python Syntax.

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mepian
The designer of this language, David Moon, was also one of the designers of
Dylan and Common Lisp.

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nickik
I know, he is amazing.

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jhbadger
Has it ever been implemented? Or is it still just a thought experiment in
language design?

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patrec
I'm pretty sure Moon (who is a famous old-school lisp hacker) will have at
least some prototyping quality implementation somewhere, the design is to
detailed for a mere thought experiment and there are longer code snippets
around:

[http://users.rcn.com/david-
moon/PLOT/page-35.html](http://users.rcn.com/david-moon/PLOT/page-35.html)

I read about PLOT years ago and thought the approach to syntax (and macros)
was quite clever; I don't remember the exact details but it was the first time
I had seen something that was both hygenic and not horribly complex to
implement.

BTW, his markdown alternative (MMD -- Moon's Mark Down) also looks pretty nice
(expressive and lightweight, but unlike org mode or other monstrosities
trivial to parse and unambigious). [http://users.rcn.com/david-
moon/MMD/HTML/index.html](http://users.rcn.com/david-moon/MMD/HTML/index.html)

He also has a ~700 LOC standalone python implementation which includes the
sequence diagram drawing code: [http://users.rcn.com/david-
moon/MMD/MMD.py](http://users.rcn.com/david-moon/MMD/MMD.py).

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tosh
slides from International Lisp Conference 2009: [http://users.rcn.com/david-
moon/PLOT/Moon-ILC09.pdf](http://users.rcn.com/david-moon/PLOT/Moon-ILC09.pdf)

