Terry Reedy wrote:
"Luis M. Gonzalez" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
...
It is as important and "python related" as other projects
such as PyPy, Stackless,
but I think this is silly. PyPy is an alternate implementation of Python, not a different language. Stackless is a compiled extension, like many others, that works with the standard implementation or maybe still a minor modification thereof.
Where would you classify Pyrex?
Language boundaries are somewhat artificial, but Pyrex clearly doesn't intend to be as similar to Python as PyPy does. Still, it's close enough to almost be considered a language extension.
If one wanted to bother, one could probably construct a language slightly more similar to Python than Pyrex, and another slightly less similar. This couldn't continue forever, as the domain is discrete. But it could go a long!! way. One could probably arrive at a graded series of languages between Python and C (probably along several different transformation vectors).
And slightly off to the side would be Python 2.5 and C2006 (or whatever year the next version is defined). But some of the languages in the series would be more similar to current Python than is Python 2.5.
So. A language is a series of specifications made at differnt times, and has a fuzzy surround of implementations which nearly meet the specifications. And this is true even where one of the implementations itself is designated as the primary specification (because people will argue that this feature or that is wrongly implemented).
Still, even given all that, Boo is clearly outside the area that is Python. (One could have a "minimal acceptable distance" which could be thought of as running correctly most of the programs that the core language would run correctly.)
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