On Fri, 15 Dec 2000, Jarkko Hietaniemi wrote:
> Limbo, the systems programming language of Inferno, nee Plan 9, nee UNIX.
>
> http://www.vitavuova.com/inferno/papers/limbo.html
What are your thoughts about Limbo? I did some Limbo programming a couple
of years back. I can't say I came out of the experience very impressed.
Some random thoughts:
* It is nice to have real tuples.
* It's not nice to be left with almost no real OO. Limbo doesn't even
have an equivalent of function-pointers -- rolling your own OO is almost
impossible!
* Channels are cute. Someone might write a Thread::Channel package when
threading really works. Are they so great that they should be a language
primative? I'm not convinced.
* A lack of a reasonable native-code interface is a real impediment to
getting real work done.
* Their port of Tk is the weirdest thing I've ever seen. You actually had
to provide TCL code in string arguments! I almost got the job of fixing
that but I think they decided to do a JVM port instead. I wonder if that
ever happened...
Other thoughts?
-sam
