Chapter 1. Why Dylan?

Table of Contents
Dynamic vs. Static Languages
Functional Languages
Algebraic Infix Syntax
Object Orientation
Garbage Collection
Why Not Dylan?

What earthly reason could there be for learning yet another computer language? And why should that language be Dylan?

Dylan has an interesting combination of features. It is a dynamic language, but is designed to perform nearly as well as a static language. It is a functional language—like Scheme or TCL—but uses an algebraic infix syntax similar to C's. Dylan is object-oriented from the ground up, supports multiple inheritence and exceptions, implements multiple dispatch, and collects garbage.