Dylan programming language

The Dylan programming language, also known as Dylan, was developed in the early 1990s by a team of engineers led by Apple, Inc. It is a multi-paradigm language, meaning it supports static and dynamic programming, and both functional and object-oriented programming styles.

Dylan's design was inspired primarily by Lisp, but it more closely resembled the syntax of ALGOL (algorithmic language) by the time it was released. The reason for this was that developers thought it would make the language easier to use. Its object-oriented characteristics are derived from CLOS (Common Lisp object system) and, in Dylan, all values are first-class objects, including numbers, characters, functions, and classes.

Dylan programming language features

• Multiple inheritance: objects can inherit their characteristics from multiple superclasses.
• Polymorphism: functions and methods can operate in different ways on different object types.
• Named parameters: arguments to functions and methods may be identified by name, rather than by the order they appear.
• Pattern-based macro syntax: snippets of code can be re-used in different ways depending on the how the arguments are used.

Hello, World! in Dylan

(file: library.dylan)

Module: dylan-user

define library hello
use io, import: { format-out };
end;

define module hello
use format-out;
end;

(file: hello.dylan)

Module: hello

format-out("Hello!\n");

Hello World, Object-oriented, Paradigm, Parameter, Polymorphism, Programming language, Programming terms