

Dylan Programming Guide (1996) now in PDF, ePub, updated HTML - BruceM
http://opendylan.org/news/2013/01/21/dylan-programming-guide.html

======
kabdib
"It's called Dylan because it's so cool that nobody understands it." -- a
manager in the Newton Group

[Kind of tounge-in-cheek; I didn't see that it was particularly difficult to
grok]

The Newton was going to be programmed in Dylan from the metal on up. The week
that it was decided to write it all in C++, there were a lot of glum ex-Dylan
programmers wandering the halls, clutching copies of the C++ ARM.

~~~
BruceM
One of them (from the Bauhaus) group is working with us now on some changes to
look at adding alternate syntax support to bring back s-expression syntax. :)

Although he didn't move over to C++ Newton, he went on to SK8 and other
things...

------
mbrock
Maybe I had a pretty weird upbringing, but the design of Dylan is one of a
rather small set of things that gives me a particular kind of wholesome, full-
body happiness, and a feeling of real warmth, and like somebody out there
truly understands me.

I think it's something like what they call "love." But no -- it's like my
_mind_ is getting hard.

~~~
BruceM
Drop by #dylan on Freenode IRC!

------
pohl
Functions as first-class values, lexically-scoped closures, map,
curry...objects, methods, classes & class inheritance...immutable objects that
can have their pointers optimized-away by the compiler.

This sounds ahead of its day for a language intended for industry.

~~~
BruceM
And multimethods ... but no protocols/interfaces sadly.

But it is enjoyable to write. :) There's a reason that I wanted to let it live
again so much that I pour days of my time into it.

~~~
yarrel
There's the forward-iteration protocol... ;-)

------
st3fan
Here is the original Dylan documentation from 1992 .. It has the s-expression
syntax: <http://moo.mx/stuff/dylan/contents.html>

~~~
mahmud
Later version of Dylan are a much better language, Algol-syntax not
withstanding. Better still, is GOO: a very elegant little language that would
make for a perfect Dylan or Common Lisp core.

~~~
BruceM
Now that we have someone looking at adding an s-expression syntax as an
alternative to OpenDylan, it has been interesting reading through my copy of
the original Apple Dylan book from 1992 (originally owned by P Tucker
Withington given the signature inside the cover). A lot did change for the
better between 1992 and 1996. I think sealing is a big example of that. I
think the 'block' construct is a bit nicer than the prefix-Dylan equivalent as
well.

It is also interesting to see how some elements of the current Dylan syntax
make more sense when you see the roots of it all in the prefix-Dylan syntax.

------
Wyatt9200
Here is a free ebook conversion tool for you. You can easily convert your
ebook from epub to pdf.

Free Online Ebook Converter <http://www.ebookconverter.net/>

It provides you with the best PDF to ePub converting experience.

~~~
BruceM
Recognizing that you're probably just shilling for your own product ...

We use <http://sphinx-doc.org/> and author in ReStructuredText with some
extensions. From that, we output HTML, PDF and ePub.

There are some issues with the ePub (they display fine, but don't validate),
so it looks like sometime soon, I'll be hacking on Sphinx to fix some of the
bugs in the epub generation.

I couldn't really be happier with this system.

