A Quick Tour of Dylan

Before starting the Tour, a few quick notes:

1. You may find it useful to get a better feel for Dylan by pasting some of the Tour examples into the Dylan Playground: https://play.opendylan.org (We hope to integrate the playground directly into the Tour soon, to make this easier.)

2. A little more background on Dylan’s history and goals may be helpful, in which case keep reading below. Otherwise, feel free to go directly to Hello, World!.

A bit more background on Dylan

Scheme and Common Lisp had a strong influence on Dylan. Like Scheme, Dylan is a “LISP-1”, meaning it has a single namespace for variables and functions. Dylan’s object system is derived from the Common Lisp Object System (CLOS), but simplified to allow for better compiler optimizations.

In general, Dylan attempts to address potential performance issues by introducing “natural” limits to the full flexibility of Lisp systems, for example by allowing the compiler to clearly understand compilable units (i.e., libraries).

In Dylan, all values (numbers, functions, classes, types, etc.) are first-class objects. Dylan supports multiple inheritance, polymorphism, multiple dispatch, keyword arguments, object introspection, pattern-based syntax extension macros, and many other features.

Dylan programs have fine-grained control over dynamism, for applications that occupy a continuum between dynamic and static programming and supporting evolutionary development (allowing for rapid prototyping followed by incremental refinement and optimization). The Open Dylan compiler provides both “production” and “rapid development” modes. In development mode many of the static restrictions are removed from the generated code, for increased flexibility.