RE: [Axiom-developer] RE: [Axiom-mail] Two beginner questions

[Bill Page]

On April 10, 2007 12:22 PM Gaby wrote:
> 
> "Bill Page" <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> [...]
> 
> | why that happened. Although I do think that Lisp is an important
> | programming language, I fear that Axiom's association with Lisp
> | is of very little benefit to Axiom. It seems that very of the
> | already very few student Lisp programmers are really interested
> | in Axiom...
> 
> We should all view Lisp as just an *assembly language* for the
> Axiom runtime system.  Any argument that elevates Lisp to the
> level of Axiom on whatever ground completely misses the whole
> point. Lisp, as any other assembly language in a high-level system,
> should be rarely be advertised.  It is of interest only to those
> who want to go under the cover and dismantle the system -- there
> are very people of those.

Personally I agree with your conclusion, however I have been
waiting the last few years for some more Lisp-oriented people to
appear who are interested in participating in the Axiom project.

> We may very well just have an Axiom Virtual Machine that does
> not require full Lisp power.

Yes. Aldor for example provides a "C" run-time environment that is
in essence a "Lisp" virtual machine. It is conceivable that Axiom
could be re-written in Aldor running in this environment - although
that would be **lot** of work.

> 
> Spad and the computational aspect is what we want to advertise.
> 
> BTW, it would be great if either you or Alfredo can make a new
> Windows binary (from build-improvements or wh-sandbox, whichever
> builds).
> 

I am willing to help anyone who wants to do this. I created the
previous Windows binary distribution more than two years ago.
I could do it again now but I think there would be greated
benefit if someone else also participates in this task.

Regards,
Bill Page.