Subject: maxima -> clojure for Google Summer of Code
From: Robert Dodier
Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 08:31:47 -0600
On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 8:06 AM, Daniel Monte Alto <danmonalto at yahoo.es> wrote:
> Well, abcl versus clojure. I can see a lot of activity in the clojure group.
> The important point about a language is the activity of the group and the
> quality of the members of this group. I don't know much about abcl but
> there seems to be a lot of activity about clojure.
ABCL was dormant for a long time but over the last several months
there has been steady development activity. It can run Maxima, but
not entirely successfully; there are many (100's) of failed tests in the
test suite. (It turns out Maxima is a good test of Lisp compilers.)
I have worked with the ABCL developers to fix various bugs and we
have made a lot of progress but it's not finished. So far several bugs
have been related to special variables --- I suspect there are more of the same.
As for Clojure, I'm guessing it would take a substantial rewrite of
Maxima to get it working. I don't know much about it but my guess is
that it's easier to finish ABCL instead.
FWIW
Robert Dodier