What is "Open Language"?

[Geoff Canyon]

On Sat, Oct 24, 2015 at 6:19 PM, Monte Goulding <monte at sweattechnologies.com
> wrote:

> > On 25 Oct 2015, at 9:05 am, Geoff Canyon <gcanyon at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > The beauty of open language (in my dreams, perhaps not the spec) would be
> > that:
> >
> > 1. No one would have to dig into the engine to implement something like
> > this.
> > 2. You could release your "counter" version, I could release my "index"
> > version, and the community would decide which they prefer and go with
> that.
> > (or both).
> > 3. And neither 1 nor 2 precludes something like this achieving critical
> > mass such that the engine maintainers decide to put it in the engine
> > directly.
>
> OK, well we can let Mark Waddingham comment on whether I’m right in that
> control structures are unlikely targets for open language or not. It seems
> quite unlikely to me as it’s significantly more complicated than commands.
> I’m not saying it’s not possible the ROI would be terrible. As in almost 0
> return for a reasonably heavy investment…


You might be right that control structures aren't included in the spec. I
disagree that the ROI would be terrible, not because I think it would be
easy to implement, but because I think the reward could be so great. The
fundamentals of xTalk haven't grown much in a long time, and I hope to see
that change.

I understand that others might disagree.

gc