Developed in the 1990s by a team of engineers at Apple, the Dylan programming language is a direct descendant of Scheme and the Common Lisp Object System (CLOS), without the Lisp syntax.
First appearing in 1992, the original implementation of Dylan was known as Apple Dylan. It was developed by Apple Computer from 1992 to 1995, at Apple Cambridge, formerly Coral Software, developers of Macintosh Common Lisp. The original language had much in common with Lisp.
Initially, it was developed with the intent of being the primary language of the Apple Newton; however, when that project was ordered into production earlier than expected, Dylan was not yet ready for release, so a new operating system for the Newton was written in C++.
When Dylan was repositioned as a desktop programming system for the classic Mac OS, this led to a significant change in syntax to a more C-like syntax, making it more appealing to programmers familiar with other languages. The resulting system was making progress when it was canceled in April of 1995. Work continued for another six months to produce the Apple Dylan Technology Release, the first and only official Apple version of the system.
The development of Dylan was reworked for general computer programming. Andrew Shalit, David A. Moon, and Orca Starbuck wrote the Dylan Reference Manual, which formed a basis for work at Harlequin, a Cambridge software company, and Carnegie Mellon University. When Apple ceased development of the language, several members went to Harlequin, which produces a working compiler and development environment for Microsoft Windows.
When Harlequin was bought out and split, some of the developers founded Functional Objects, and, in 2003, the firm contributed its repository to the Dylan open source community, forming the foundation of the free and open-source software, Open Dylan, a Dylan implementation.
Carnegie Mellon University stopped working on their Dylan implementation because Apple was no longer sponsoring the project. Its implementation, known as the Gwydion Project, was taken over by the Dylan community as the open-source model of Project Gwydion Dylan.
Today, Gwydion Dylan and Open Dylan are the only working Dylan compilers. Gwydion Dylan is a Dylan-to-C compiler, while Open Dylan produces native code for Intel processors.
Influenced by Common Lisp, Scheme, ALGOL, and EuLisp, Dylan adds an integrated object system derived from CLOS. All values, including numbers, characters, functions, and classes, are first-class objects. The programming language supports multiple inheritance, polymorphism, multiple dispatch, keyword arguments, object introspection, pattern-based syntax extension macros, and other advanced features.
Its main design goal is to be a dynamic programming language, suited for developing commercial software. Dylan attempts to address potential performance issues through the introduction of natural limits to the full flexibility of Lisp systems. This allows the compiler to clearly understand compilable units, such as libraries.
Although Dylan was influenced heavily by Scheme and other Lisp languages, it has an ALGOL-like syntax rather than a Lisp-like syntax.
Topics related to the Dylan programming language, including compilers, IDEs, editors, implementations, guides and tutorials, courses on programming in Dylan, forums, and developer communities focused on the Dylan programming language, are listed in this portion of our web guide.
Recommended Resources
The Programming Language DataBase (PLDB) is a comprehensive database of programming languages and their features, created for programming language creators and users. PLDB content is published to the public domain and may be used freely. Its Dylan page offers statistical data on the language, created in 1992, along with an overview of the language, links to official and unofficial online references for the language, code examples, and language features and examples, with source codes.
https://pldb.pub/concepts/dylan.html
CodeDocs: Dylan (programming language)
CodeDocs provides tutorials, documentation, and references for various programming languages and technologies, covering a variety of languages, including Dylan, an open-source language. Statistical data regarding the Dylan programming language is provided, along with an introduction to the language, including its history (together with Apple Dylan), syntax, modules versus namespace, classes, methods and generic functions, extensibility, references, and external links.
https://codedocs.org/what-is/dylan-programming-language
Dylan (DYnamic LANguage) is a dynamic, object-oriented language that can be used in several applications. Written by Neal Feinberg, Sonya E. Keene, Robert O. Mathews, and P. Tucker Withington, the book can be downloaded for free in PDF format. Written for application programmers with experience working in a conventional language, such as C, Pascal, COBOL, FORTRAN, or BASIC, or in an object-oriented language, like C++, Java, Smalltalk, or Common Lisp with CLOS.
https://www.onlineprogrammingbooks.com/dylan-programming/
GitHub is a web-based platform that provides hosting for software development and version control using Git. This is a repository for the Open Dylan implementation of the Dylan programming language, as well as most of the Dylan libraries, including the Open Dylan compiler and IDE, and test frameworks. The site is maintained by a group of developers who are passionate about the Dylan programming language and its implementation, many of whom are introduced here.
https://github.com/dylan-lang/
GitHub: Dylan Programming Language
This is a GitHub topic page for the Dylan programming language. A topic page serves as a portal to repositories and conversations around specific topics. Dylan is a multi-paradigm language that is a direct descendant of Scheme and CLOS. This site features links to the GitHub sites for the source code and other files for the Dylan programming language, the Open Dylan implementation of the language, and a repository for learning the Dylan programming language.
https://github.com/topics/dylan-language
Created by a group of volunteers working to create new development tools supporting Dylan, an advanced dynamic object-oriented programming language, including updating Carnegie Mellon University's Gwydion Dylan compiler, making it work well under modern versions of Linux and FreeBSD. News about the project, an overview of the Dylan programming language, downloads, documentation, mailing lists, and links for books covering the language, including a downloadable reference manual.
http://www.gwydiondylan.org/
Marlais Dylan Interpreter, The
Published by the Computer & Information Science & Engineering department of the University of Florida, Joseph N. Wilson (Associate Professor) introduces the Marlais Dylan Interpreter, a straightforward implementation of a programming language strongly resembling the Dylan programming language, an object-oriented dynamic language, developed by Brent Benson of Harris Computer Systems, and other Dylan implementations, such as MacMarlais, a Mac implementation of Marlais.
https://www.cise.ufl.edu/~jnw/Marlais/
The official website for the Community of Open Dylan, an object-oriented, dynamic programming language that is an implementation of Dylan, a direct descendant of Scheme and CLOS, the site includes a 30-minute video introducing the language, a Playground where programmers can try it out in a web browser, a textual introduction, programming guide, reference manual, and documentation for the language. Instructions for installing Open Dylan on Unix and Windows platforms are included.
https://opendylan.org/
