On Oct 29, 2007, at 1:23 PM, Hans-Martin Mosner wrote:

> Igor Stasenko schrieb:
>>
>> There is a language which uses multiple-dispatch. See Slate. And it  
>> is
>> object-oriented.
>>
> Yes, I know - Slate is a very interesting approach, and from a  
> theoretical standpoint, I like it a lot. AFAIK there is no efficient  
> implementation of the dispatch algorithm yet, and progress is  
> stalled according to the web site:
>> Early 2006 - The project is on hold after loss of interest from the  
>> lead implementor. Slate needs a significant qualitative speed boost  
>> for further updates.
> This is a sad thing.

Dispatch was NOT why Slate is slow - it's because we wrote the  
libraries with Strongtalk-style optimization in mind (assuming massive  
inlining lets you write heavily abstracted libraries), without a clear  
step-wise roadpath to getting there ... and so eventually the compiler  
developer (co-creator) left, and we had no other experts to get us  
through the problems. The UI was written for example, but so slow that  
it is completely unusable, even slower than the Sun Lively Kernel  
(Morphic in Javascript).

That said, there is a specific challenge to make PICs work with multi- 
methods, but it's nothing compared to the more difficult task of  
implementing the darned things in the first place for a new runtime.  
Even the Strongtalk effort is losing momentum...

--
-Brian
http://briantrice.com