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 (ATG). 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 (along with David A. Moon and Orca Starbuck) 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 Dylan open source community. 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 (CMU) 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 (ANDF).
Timeline overview
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.
Dylan began with the acquisition of Coral Software, which became ATG East. Coral was marketing Macintosh Common Lisp, and Apple asked them to continue to support MCL and simultaneously develop a new dynamic language with all the programmer power and convenience of Lisp and Smalltalk but with the performance required for production applications Quoted from MacTech Vol 7 No. 1 In the late 1980s, Apple’s Advanced Technology Group (ATG) saddled themselves with the task of creating a new language, one that would combine the best qualities of dynamic languages like Smalltalk and Lisp, with those of static languages like C++. Recognizing that a language definition alone was insufficient to meet the challenges of developing the next ever-more complex generation of software, ATG further committed the Dylan team (now a part of the Developer Products Group) to developing an attendant development environment that would enable the rapid prototyping and construction of real-world applications Quoted from MacTech Vol 11 No. 8 The acknowledgments from the First Dylan Manual (1992) states:
Designing Dylan has been a work of many hands. The primary contributors to the language design were Glenn S. Burke, Robert Cassels, John Hotchkiss, Jeremy A. Jones, David A. Moon, Jeffrey Piazza, Andrew Shalit, Oliver Steele, and Gail Zacharias. Additional design work and oodles of helpful comments were provided by Jerome T. Coonen, James Grandy, Ike Nassi, Walter R. Smith, Steve Strassmann, and Larry Tesler. Many more people provided invaluable feedback during the design. Among these were Peter Alley, Kim Barrett, Alan Bawden, Ernie Beernink, Rasha Bozinovic, Steve Capps, Mikel Evins, Gregg Foster, Jed Harris, Alice K. Hartley, Alan Kay, Larry Kenyon, Matthew MacLaurin, John Meier, Richard Mlynarik, Peter Potrebic, David Singer, David C. Smith, Bill St. Clair, Andy Stadler, Joshua Susser, Michael Tibbott, Tom Vrhel, Bob Welland, and Derek White. Moral and logistical support were provided by Donna Auguste, Chrissy Boggs, James Joaquin, Rick LeFaivre, Becky Mulhearn, David Nagel, Mark Preece, Mary Reagan, Shane Robison, and Susan M. Whittemore. The Dylan project was directed by Ike Nassi. This manual was written by Andrew Shalit with contributions from Jeffrey Piazza and David Moon. The manual was designed by Scott Kim and Steve Strassmann. The typefaces are the Lucida family and Letter Gothic. The cover was designed by Scott Kim. The Dylan project was funded entirely by the Advanced Technology Group of Apple Computer. The two non-Apple collaborators were CMU Gwydion and Harlequin.
"I think our general impression was that our influence at CMU was limited to being able to participate in meetings and email discussions where we could try to convince the Apple people to see things our way. There was actually a great deal of consensus about many issues, mainly because the designers were primarily from the Common Lisp community, and saw similar strengths and failings of Common Lisp." Rob MacLachlan, former member of CMU's Dylan project Gwydion. CMU still provide an information page about Gwydion.
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