Hi all!

On 12/28/2010 07:22 PM, Eliot Miranda wrote:
> I simply don't see the benefit of putting energy into other languages.
>   I see the benefit of a textual bootstrap.  But why is it worth-while
> implementing that in C instead of Smalltalk?

Well, one benefit would be to fit more easily into the ecosystems of 
Linux distros etc where they generally get nervous from having to start 
from an "unknown" binary.

In other words - if a system can be built solely from text files using 
"stock" tools like a C compiler (or any tool typically available in 
these ecosystems) then the acceptance is much higher.

A similar example was when I wrote a "module" (=build script) for Lunar 
Linux which is a source distro much like Gentoo - for the GHC compiler 
(Haskell). GHC needs an existing GHC to compile itself, so the script 
had to first download a binary GHC in order to compile the new one.

Not that I think this argument is "worth" it perhaps, but hey, any and 
all tools/efforts that gives us flexibility is cool in my book. :)

regards, Göran