open source (and yes, for APL too)

[Douglas P. Wilson]

Just a few more comments on open source:

Another reason many people are reluctant to learn a new programming
language is the lack of a good example of a significant large project
written in the language.   Many compilers and interpreters are written
in the language they process and therefore can serve that role themselves.

I've mentioned before my interest in collecting source code for languages --
that partly developed from trying to learn new programming languages
when the only real example before me was the compiler or interpreter
itself.

I think the Clean IDE is written in Clean, is it not?   What about the language
itself?   

Just to answer a few questions that have been raised -- to the best of my knowledge
there is no open source version of Cobal, and only a primitive free implementation,
but then who cares?   Does anyone really want to write in Cobal?   My collection of
language source code is also missing PL/I, which would be more interesting to me
since I had to learn it once, but it's not a high priority item for the same reason.
I have two different implementations of APL, both written in C -- I can't remember
where I got them anymore, but I'd be happy to mail them to anyone interested.

      dpw

Douglas P. Wilson     dpwilson@island.net
http://www.island.net/~dpwilson/index.html
http://www.SocialTechnology.org/index.html