[Mono-devel-list] Re: Re: Dynamically changing classes?

[Thomas Sondergaard]

> I think you're mixing two things: language implementation and
> interoperability with other languages in the CLR. This is the cause of
> much confusion: the two things should be addressed separately or you'd
> end up saying that C is not an adequate language to implement a dynamic
> language, because C doesn't have classes/interfaces/whatever. The truth
> is most dynamic languages are implemented in C just fine:-)

As all developers I'm in love with the principle of separation of concerns.
But I believe it is wrong to treat implementation and interoperability as
separate issues in this particular case. The main argument for implementing
a dynamic language on the CLR is the interoperability. If you don't get any
interoperability benefits why suffer the performance degradation you are
likely to see with a CLR implementation rather than a native implementation?
(*)

To sum it up: Yes, the CLR is turing complete and is a possible
implementation platform for a dynamicallly typed language, but if there is
no interoperability benefit it is probably not worth it. After all you can
interoperate with .net even if you language doesn't run on the CLR.

(*): I am aware of several other benefits such as free threading, garbage
collection, platform independence etc etc, but interoperability is a what
concerns me the most.

Thomas