History of the Dylan programming language


Dylan programming language history first introduces the history with a continuous text. The second section gives a timeline overview of the history and present several milestones and watersheds. The third section presents quotations related to the history of the Dylan programming language.

Introduction to the history

Dylan was originally developed by Apple Cambridge, then a part of the Apple Advanced Technology Group. Its initial goal was to produce a new system programming application development programming language for the Apple Newton PDA, but soon it became clear that this would take too much time. Walter Smith developed NewtonScript for scripting and application development, and systems programming was done in the language C. Development continued on Dylan for the Macintosh. The group produced an early Technology Release of its Apple Dylan product, but the group was dismantled due to internal restructuring before they could finish any real usable products.
According to Apple Confidential by Owen W. Linzmayer, the original code name for the Dylan project was Ralph, for Ralph Ellison, author of the novel Invisible Man, to reflect its status as a secret research project.
The initial killer application for Dylan was the Apple Newton PDA, but the initial implementation came too late for it. Also, the performance and size objectives were missed. So Dylan was retargeted toward a general computer programming audience. To compete in this market, it was decided to switch to infix notation.
Andrew Shalit wrote the Dylan Reference Manual, which served as a basis for work at Harlequin and Carnegie Mellon University. When Apple Cambridge was closed, several members went to Harlequin, which produces a working compiler and development environment for Microsoft Windows. When Harlequin got bought and split, some of the developers founded Functional Objects. In 2003, the firm contributed its repository to the . This repository was the foundation of the free and open-source software Dylan implementation Open Dylan.
In 2003, the Dylan community had already proven its engagement for Dylan. In summer 1998, the community took over the code from the Carnegie Mellon University Dylan implementation named for the Gwydion project, and founded the open-source model project Gwydion Dylan. At that time, CMU had already stopped working at their Dylan implementation because Apple in its financial crisis could no longer sponsor the project. CMU thus shifted its research toward the mainstream and toward Java.
Today, Gwydion Dylan and Open Dylan are the only working Dylan compilers. While the first is still a Dylan-to-C compiler, Open Dylan produces native code for Intel processors. Open Dylan was designed to account for the Architecture Neutral Distribution Format.

History by (mostly) quotations

The roots of the programming language Dylan

Dylan was created by the same group at Apple that was responsible for Macintosh Common Lisp. The first implementation had a Lisp-like syntax.
The acknowledgments from the First Dylan Manual states:
The two non-Apple collaborators were CMU Gwydion and Harlequin.
CMU still provide an information page about .

The roots of changing the syntax from Lisp way to an infix one

The developers at the Cambridge lab and CMU thought they'd get better reception from the C/C++ community out there if they changed the syntax to make it look more like these languages.
Rob MacLachlan, at Carnegie Mellon during the Dylan project, from comp.lang.dylan:
Bruce Hoult replied:
Oliver Steele in a :

End of Dylan as commercial product

Project death at Apple in 1995

Raffael Cavallaro once provided some insights:
Gabor Greif:
Oliver Steele:
From Mike Lockwood, a former member of the Apple Cambridge Labs :
A picture of the shirt can be seen .

The Death at Harlequin and Functional Objects

Gary M. Palter about Functional Objects and the history of the Dylan project at Harlequin:

Open Sourcing of CMU Gwydion Project

CMU's Gwydion Project became open source in 1998. Eric Kidd in a to the Gwydion Hackers about the process:
The Gwydion website is http://www.gwydiondylan.org.

Open Sourcing of Harlequin Dylan / Functional Objects Project

Before Functional Objects, formerly Harlequin Dylan, ceased operating in January 2006, they open sourced their repository in 2004 to Gwydion Dylan Maintainers. The repository included white papers, design papers, documentation once written for the commercial product, and the code for:
The project is now known as Open Dylan and its website is https://opendylan.org.