[plt-scheme] Re: Is R6RS useless for PLT?

On Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:23:36 -0500
"Sam TH" <samth at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 9:48 AM, Shriram Krishnamurthi
> <sk at cs.brown.edu> wrote:
> > Out of curiosity, how many Perl implementations do you routinely
> > port between?  Or Ruby implementations?  Or Tcl implementations?
> 
> Perl and Tcl both seem to have only one implementation.  There is an
> alternative Ruby implementation, called JRuby, which describes itself
> as compatible.  There are at least two alternative Python
> implementations, PyPy and Jython, but I don't think their
> compatibility is perfect.

There is also IronPython but that's actually not what I wanted to say.

In Python-land there is Python aka CPython which basically defines the
standard and is it's own reference implementation. All new features are
introduced there first and may or may not be adapted soon in other
implementations. Currently, CPython is what actually matters, the other
implementations are currently rather exotic and neither Jython nor
IronPython will ever replace CPython. Maybe PyPy will do that in the
long run, but PyPy is focused a bit more on research about dynamic
languages and how to get them running fast than on replacing CPython.

regards,
Marek