[Haskell-cafe] Hack on the Delve core, with Delve and Haskell

[spoon]

> Could you create a comparison of Delve to other (potentially) similar
> languages?  For example, how is Delve similar/dissimilar to Clojure
> and Scala?
>  

I don't have any experience with Clojure at all, but looking at the
page, it would appear that Clojure does not support first-class
continuations, while Delve does.  Delve is closer to scheme in this
respect.

Delve differs from Scala in that Delve is a much more imperative
language.  Classes are not static - they are created at run-time. In
this way, Delve is akin to a well-typed ruby.  

Delve aims to support the open classes  and objects of Smalltalk and
Ruby.  Since it is typed, breaking the encapsulation of an object could
be tracked by the type system - I'd venture to say would be useful for a
situation like a classbox, which modifies classes after they are
defined.

>         Delve is released under the terms of the GNU GPLv3.
> 
> Note intended as a criticism of the GPL or your decision to use it,
> but does this impact people's ability to use the Delve standard
> libraries in their own non-GPL projects?

Don't worry!  The GPL will be used to protect only the source of the
virtual machine and the compiler - since Delve bytecode is just input
for the VM, it doesn't constitute a modification of the software so it
can be proprietary.  In the same way, it's still GPL to allow
proprietary extensions to be linked into the VM or compiler through
specific interfaces.

- John