MDL (programming language): Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 03:14, 1 July 2010

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'''MDL''' (the MIT Design Language) [also the MicroStation Development Language (see www.Bentley.com)] is a descendant of the [[Lisp programming language|Lisp]] [[Programming]] language. Its initial purpose was to provide high level language support for the Dynamic Modeling Group at [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT]]'s [[Project MAC]]. It was initially developed in 1971 on the [[PDP-10]] computer under the [[Incompatible Timesharing System]].

The initial development team consisted of [[Gerald Sussman]] and [[Carl Hewitt]] of the Artificial Intelligence Lab, and Chris Reeve, Bruce Daniels, and David Cressey of the Dynamic Modeling Group. Later, [[Stu Galley]], also of the Dynamic Modeling Group, wrote the MDL documentation.

MDL was initially known as “Muddle”. This style of self-deprecating humor was not widely understood or appreciated outside of Project MAC and a few other early citadels of information technology. So the name was sanitized to MDL.

MDL provides several enhancements to classical Lisp. It supports several built-in data types, including lists, strings and arrays, and also user-defined data types. It offers multithreaded expression evaluation and coroutines. Variables can carry both a local value within a scope, and a global value, for passing data between scopes. Advanced built-in functions supported interactive debugging of MDL programs, incremental development, and reconstruction of source programs from object programs.

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But the largest influence that MDL had was on the genre known as [[interactive fiction]]. An interactive fiction game known as [[Zork]], sometimes called Dungeon, was first written in MDL. Later, Reeve, Daniels, Galley and other members of Dynamic Modeling went on to start [[Infocom]], a company that produced many early commercial works of interactive fiction.

== Code sample<ref>http://pdp-11.ru/simh_trailing-edge_com/software.html</ref> ==

<DEFINE EXIT-TO (EXITS RMS)

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<MAPLEAVE T>)>>

.EXITS>>

== External Link links==

* [http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B8MzhPYiUtOUMzJmYzIwNmYtYzc2Ny00NzU5LWIyODQtNjA2ZjVmNzRlZmYy&hl=en MDL Programming Primer on Google Docs]

== References ==

== References ==

<references/>

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mdl (Programming Language)}}

[[Category:Dynamically-typed programming languages]]

[[Category:Functional languages]]