[squeak-dev] A Bootstrap Compiler

Igor Stasenko siguctua at gmail.com
Tue Dec 28 23:11:27 UTC 2010


On 28 December 2010 21:16, Michael Haupt <mhaupt at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Igor,
>
> On 28 December 2010 16:13, Igor Stasenko <siguctua at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> P.S. i think i know the answer to question why "computer revolution
>>>> didn't happened yet",
>>>> because every time people inventing something new, they implementing it in C.
>>> ...
>>> On the other hand, stacking ever more abstractions on top of each
>>> other eventually costs an amount of performance that will be noticed.
>>
>> The key words here is 'on top of' which means an evolutionary approach,
>> not revolutionary. Because for revolutionary things, you would use 'instead of' wording.
>
> good distinction, I see.
>
>> Every time you building something on top of C, you inheriting its good and bad traits,
>> because you can't escape the semantic model, imposed by C language and its compiler(s).
>
> I've found C to be rather malleable; a possible way of providing one
> least complex abstraction over raw assembly. Not comfy, but malleable.
>

you probably will be surprised , but i find raw assembly are much
malleable than C.
Simply because it having much less constraints - only those, which in hardware.

> However, ultimately, you will have to talk to the metal. I completely
> agree that it is much nicer to talk to the metal from a language
> standing on a higher ground. The required compiler should not waste
> resources (of whatever kind). Building such a compiler surely is
> daunting. Perhaps that is one reason why the "C layer" is still
> popular as a target.

Perhaps. Still investments to talking directly with metal are well
rewarded.. like ~3x speedup in Cog.

>
> Or is it the metal that is shaped in the wrong way? There used to be
> Lisp machines ...
>
That's a good question. But we have what we have. :)

> Best,
>
> Michael
>
>



-- 
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.



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