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thisisnot | 5 years ago

Ralph was the initial name of the project, from the film the invisible man. More about dylan history:(1)

Ralph used prefix notation, dylan infix notation. Here you can find an implementation of ralph:(2)

From (2): Ralph is a Lisp-1 dialect that compiles to JavaScript. It is heavily inspired by an early version of Dylan (also known as "Prefix Dylan"), as described in Dylan – An object-oriented dynamic language.

Also (3) is about a Lisp to Dylan translator. There is also norvig lisp to dylan translator cited in (3).

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Dylan_programmi...

(2) https://github.com/turbolent/ralph

(3) https://tim.pritlove.org/2003/11/10/converting-lisp-to-dylan...

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mikelevins|5 years ago

Just a nit: the film "The Invisible Man" is unrelated, based on a novel by H. G. Wells about a scientist who drives himself mad with a technique that renders him invisible.

Ralph was named for Ralph Ellison, author of a different, later book Invisible Man, about being a black man in America.

thisisnot|5 years ago

You are right, wikipedia: According to Apple Confidential by Owen W. Linzmayer, the original code name for the Dylan project was Ralph, for Ralph Ellison, author of the novel Invisible Man, to reflect its status as a secret research project.