On Thu, 4 Nov 2010, Andrew Coppin wrote:
It's a full-scale programming language (although I gather folks do use it for scripting too), and while it may or may not contain features that are also in Python, it is manifestly /not/ "inspired by" Python. Clearly it was inspired my Miranda and the host of similar-yet-incompatible languages like it. (The design goal was to replace these languages, after all.)
On a somewhat tangental note: It seems increadible to me that Haskell was invented in 1990, and Miranda way back in 1985. At the same time, Commodore Business Machines released the iconic Commodore 64 in 1982, and most of the civilised people of the world spent the next 10 years or so writing computer programs in BASIC. It's a rather sobering thought to think that way back in those long-lost days of 8-bit microprocessors, RF-modulated graphics and unstructured programming, there were people somewhere working on languages such as Miranda. I mean, comparing BASIC to FP is like comparing a water pistol to a tactical thermonuclear device. (!) Where the heck did all this stuff happen?! Can you actually run something like Haskell with mere kilobytes of RAM?
For me at least 1985 is the year, where the Amiga 1000 was released. At this time, machines with a MC 68020 were refered to as "Work stations", what for me meant something like "expensive professional computer". For Amiga with some megabytes RAM and a CD drive we had the Geek-Gadgets-2-CD in 1997 that contained Gofer. However at this time I was glad to program in object oriented style and especially GUIs with OOP.