Part 1. Basic Concepts

• Introduction
• Quick Start
• Methods, Classes, and Objects
• User-Defined Classes and Methods
• Class Inheritance
• Multimethods
• Modularity
• A Simple Library

Introduction, describes the goals of Dylan, and tells you where Dylan fits in the world of programming languages.

Quick Start, is a practical guide for getting started using Dylan. It shows the look and feel of a hypothetical Dylan listener, introduces the most basic concepts of Dylan, and presents a complete Dylan program. You can type in these examples and experiment with Dylan.

Methods, Classes, and Objects, introduces the concepts of methods, built-in classes, class inheritance, and explains what it means to be an object.

In Chapters User-Defined Classes and Methods through Modularity, we start to develop an example of a library that represents different kinds of time and position. A library is a complete unit of code that can be used by many different clients. Our eventual goal in this book is to develop a sample application that handles the scheduling of aircraft that are arriving at, and departing from, an airport. For more information, see Design of the Airport Application. The airport application will use the time and position library.

Also in Chapters User-Defined Classes and Methods through Modularity, we show how to write object-oriented programs in Dylan. We explain class and method definition, class inheritance, method dispatch, and modularity.

A Simple Library contains the code developed in Part 1. Basic Concepts as a complete working library.