MDL (programming language): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 14:39, 10 January 2007

Revision as of 00:46, 20 January 2007

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'''MDL''' (the MIT Design Language) is a descendant of the [[Lisp_programming_languageLisp programming language|Lisp]] [[Programming]] language.Its initial purpose was to provide high level language support for the Dynamic Modeling Group at [[Massachusetts_Institute_of_TechnologyMassachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT]]'s [[Project_MACProject 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.

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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.

Although MDL is obsolete, some of its features have been incorporated in later versions of Lisp. Gerald Sussman went on to develop the [[Scheme]] language, in collaboration with [[Guy Steele]], who later wrote the specifications for [[Common Lisp]] and [[Java (programming language)|Java]]. Carl Hewitt had already published the idea for the [[PLANNER]] language before the MDL project began, but his subsequent thinking on PLANNER reflected lessons learned from building MDL. Planner concepts influenced languages such as [[Prolog]] and [[Smalltalk]]. Smalltalk and [[Simula]], in turn, influenced his future work on the [[Actor model]].

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.

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.

[[Category:Dynamically-typed programming languages]]