OK, here's what I'm hoping Parrot can provide for the language I'm building.
My big requirement is for lightweight microthreads (hopefully *very* lightweight - I'm considering one scheduler that can handle *millions* of threads on a single machine). Oh and I will need them to be serializable. I can live with co-operative scheduling, perhaps running 'regular' threads over the top do provide a layer of preemptive scheduling. I just read some stuff about Rhino JavaScript now having serializable continuations - that's just the ticket, although I haven't looked into the performance yet and I don't yet know if Rhino can provide a platform for a new language. I understand Parrot uses continuations (serializable), and also supports (will support?) native threads. What about multi-methods? Can/Will Parrot do dynamic dispatch based on the types of more than one parameter? This may not turn out to be a must-have for me. I think I'll leave it at that for now - as you can see I'm in the early stages of this one. The only other thing is licensing. Did I see that Parrot is GPL? In these days of dynamic linking and late binding, it's hard to be sure about the boundaries of the GPL viral effect. What are the implications for the license of my language? Oh and I have to ask your opinions - will Guido get a pie in the face next year? Thanks Tom.
