KSL [was Re: Introduction and RFC]

[Stephen Colebourne]

The KSL is great in theory, but it has yet to prove its value in 
practice. As far as I know, there have been no changes committed to KSL 
that separate it from javac.

In addition, KSL has a high barrier of entry (in terms of fulfilling all 
the many things that compiler writers and language designers should do, 
including documentation, spec writing and tests).

Of course, none of this is wrong, it just may signal that 'we the 
community' need to create another project separate from KSL where there 
is a much lower barrier of entry, but as a result a higher risk that the 
compiler/resulting code will be broken. ie. a place where ideas can 
actually be investigated.

Stephen
PS. This discussion about KSL probably should be on the KSL list, but 
thread-wise it makes sense here for now.

PPS.I should also note that I originally signed up here as the KSL 
project webpages told me to do so, so the fact that there is now a KSL 
mailing list is rather a surprise.


Frederic Simon wrote:
> I really thought that the KSL was created exactly for that: Filtering 
> language proposals. But there are no mailing lists for KSL pure, and the 
> Bug database should not be populated with KSL noise.
> About KSL, in my experience adding some code to javac (pure 
> implementation) to support small language proposal, is a lot faster and 
> cheaper than:
> - Evaluate the coherence/readability
> - Evaluate its usefulness (in writing code and API)
> - Evaluate its impact on current API
> - Evaluate the risk impact on the javac and JVM
> 
> So, the KSL is great. Have it, play with it, throw it away (and "may 
> be", "sometimes", "rarely", "occasionally": keep it). And it does not 
> have to be Sun employees doing the steps. For me, once a language 
> proposal and RFE entry starts to get momentum (votes and so on), so the 
> team leaders as decided in the GB (Sun for the moment) can get involved 
> and evaluate the next steps.
> 
> The KSL for me is  "Extreme Agility", and luxury of having the 
> implementation before deciding if you need it or not.
> 
> So, please keep the spirit of it, it's good for everyone.
> 
> On 10/25/07, *Dalibor Topic* <robilad at kaffe.org 
> <mailto:robilad at kaffe.org>> wrote:
> 
>     Ted Neward wrote:
>      > Interesting--which list *would* be the proper place to discuss
>     language
>      > proposals? Is there one? (Personally, I thought it was this one.)
>      >
>     I think the kitchen sink language project is the venue you are looking
>     for: https://ksl.dev.java.net/
> 
>     cheers,
>     dalibor topic
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> http://freddy33.bglogspot.com/ <http://freddy33.bglogspot.com/>
> http://www.jfrog.org/