# Fwd: What is the status of Joy ?

## Christopher Diggins — 2007-01-29 19:09:20

    I thought members of the group would be interested that the recent Cat

    release has generated some interest in Joy on the comp.lang.functional

    newsgroup.

    Below is a question and my response. Please correct me if I am

    mistaken, and share your answers so that I can properly respond on the

    comp.lang.functional newsgroup.

    Cheers!

    Christopher

    http://www.cdiggins.com

    ---------- Forwarded message ----------

    Alex wrote:

     > I found very little activity concerning Joy in the last two years, at

    > least on this newsgroup.

    > What is the language's status ? Is it still maintained ? Is it

    > considered as superseded by something else ?

    > (I've seen the Cat announcement yesterday, but as I understand it, Cat

    > doesn't target the same niche (extreme simplicity, no heavy type

    > inference machinery)).

    >

    > Thanks in advance,

    >

    > -Alex

     From: Christopher Diggins <cdiggins@...>

    Date: Jan 29, 2007 11:05 AM

    Subject: Re: What is the status of Joy ?

    To:

    Hi Alex,

    I haven't seen much active devolpment on Joy over the last year, apart

    from a few implementations that pop-up on occasison (e.g. http://

    tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/concatenative/message/3033 ). The language

    is quite stable, apparently having achieved its intended goals (but

    this is just my impression, I could be mistaken). I know that Manfred,

    is semi-retired and participates in the mailing list somewhat

    sporadically.

    Factor ( http://www.factorcode.org ) is another language similar to

    Joy with a small and very active development community.

    Cat is being developed just by myself for the time being. Having a

    type system (albeit an optional one) puts it a bit apart from the

    other "concatenative" languages. Cat has eliminated some of the more

    powerful variable effect primitives of Joy, and distinguishes between

    function types and list types (Joy doesn't have to bother).

    Nonetheless it is a good question. I'll forward your post to the

    concatenative newsgroup and post the response here in a couple of

    days.

    Cheers,

    Christopher Diggins

    http://www.cdiggins.com