[clean-list] Queries for introduction to Clean's language and environment

[Mikael]

Dear Clean List, Erik, Erik, John, Philippos, Rinus and Thomas,

I'm completely new to Clean and want to get an introductory idea about Clean
- what can it be used for, how mature is the language and environment, and
so on.

I queried the mailing list about this Monday, response is yet to come
though, therefore I email you who I see worked on it in different ways with
the same questions - I had no idea who'd be best to query, so I hope you're
ok with that I query you on Clean. If there's anyone else / any other forum
that I would be better off querying, please let me know.

It'd be great if you would want to take part in enlightening me and possibly
the Clean ML about these things.

Many thanks!
Mikael

2011/3/25 Mikael <mikael.rcv at gmail.com>

> Hi,
>
> I'm completely new to Clean - both its environment and language - and would
> like to ask a couple of questions. I'd appreciate your response highly. If
> you happen to have the answer to only a part of the questions then please
> answer to only that one.
>
> There may be more questions later, the point now however was to get a more
> detailed sense of introduction and understanding
>
> I look forward to your response!
>
> Many thanks,
> Mikael
>
> *Documentation, community
> * * What tutorials to Clean's language & environment are you aware of
> today?
>  * Are there other forums for Clean programming than this emailing list -
> any IRC channel, annual symposium or alike?
>
> *Live coding, debugging*
>  * Is there anything like a REPL / live code environment? I understood
> Hilde should do this, where do I find its executable? Does it have any
> particular limitations?
>  * What debugging features are there? Can I get a complete stack &
> environment trace/dump on errors?
>
> *Performance
> * * The Clean vs. GHC benchmarks I've seen are not so clear about what's
> what. What is your understanding of Clean's current performance in relation
> with that of other environments such as GHC and C code?
>      The numbers I'm interested in is when all involved environments have
> high optimization levels enabled, but still technically are high-level
> languages i.e. heap&stack overflow checking is on, that kind of thing.
>  * Which algorithm does the GC run on?
>
> *Exceptions
> * * How developed is the exception handling today, can Clean code catch
> any exception such as IO or heap overflow exceptions?
>
> *C/C++ integration*
>  * What level of integration / Foreign Function Interface is there from
> Clean to the C or C++ worlds?
>      * Can you inline C or C++ code in your Clean code - if so how?
>      * Can you import and call external (i.e. C) procedures and call them -
> if so how?
>      * What data types can I pass from Clean to the C world, and back?
>
> *License*
>  * Is the licensing LGPL or commercial also today? Furthermore:
>     * Does this mean a commercial application can use Clean as long as the
> runtime library link file is not statically linked into the app? Or would
> you allow statically linked apps also?
>     * Is there any intent to release Clean's environment as BSD or MIT i.e.
> a completely open-sourced license?
>  * Is the Clean developers team open to open source contributions to the
> codebase?
>
> *Unicode support*
>  * What level of Unicode support does Clean have?
>    * For instance, are characters 32bit / can they be?
>    * Is this support all-pervasive throughout Clean?
>
> *Bytecode format*
>  * Is there any documentation of the VM/bytecode intermediary format when
> compiling Clean to C? Where's the closest thing to documentation out there?
>      * Has there been any initiative to compile this format to any other
> language than C?
>      * Would you think it would be a good idea to use the bytecode for
> other things than C code generation?
>
> *Multiprocessing*
>  * Does Clean of today always run in one and the same OS process & one and
> the same OS thread? Can it use more? I read on the ML that someone made a
> parallel variant for m68k:s.
>  * Is there any green threading system?
>
> *Portability
> * * Is Clean completely locked to Windows and Linux, or can all
> non-GUI-parts be fully utilized on all other supporting systems such as Mac
> OS X, BSD and IPhones?
>  * Is the Dynamics feature and the Hilde shell only available on Windows
> also today, if so how come?
>  * Can Clean be satisfactorily used from the console (to compile, run apps,
> live interaction, other activities)?
>
> *IO*
>  * Can a Clean app do IO asynchronously, if so how, does the functionality
> fall back on a central event loop based on select()?
>  * What level of IO performance would you say that Clean has?
>
> *Runtime environment
> * * Which are the runtime environment files that are dynamically used by a
> Clean-generated executable, what directory can i find them? (on
> Windows/Linux)
>  * What's the lower and upper intervals for how much space the runtime
> dependency files can take for an app? (Hello world and up to max complexity)
>
> *Memory use*
>  * Do you view Clean as completely safe for 'space leaks' (given that the
> programmer was somehow present while coding)?
>
> *Robustness
> * * Would you say that Clean's environment is robust by industry standards
> i.e. a non-GUI app would not crash because of Clean bugs ever?
>  * What real-world/production apps are you aware of that Clean has been/is
> used in?
>
> *Completeness, development*
>  * By your own standards, how complete is Clean's language specification
> and environment?
>  * How final is the language specification, could incompatibility with
> newer versions of Clean happen for current code?
>  * Approx what development takes place on Clean today? What are the current
> development objectives? What maintenance can you expect the next years or
> so?
>
>
>
>
>
>
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