Path: csiph.com!xmission!news.snarked.org!border2.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!news.iecc.com!.POSTED.news.iecc.com!nerds-end From: Bruce Mardle Newsgroups: comp.compilers Subject: Re: Compiler implementation language preference ? Date: Wed, 23 May 2018 07:33:14 -0700 (PDT) Organization: Compilers Central Lines: 25 Sender: news@iecc.com Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com Message-ID: <18-05-010@comp.compilers> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: gal.iecc.com; posting-host="news.iecc.com:2001:470:1f07:1126:0:676f:7373:6970"; logging-data="22155"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@iecc.com" Keywords: practice Posted-Date: 23 May 2018 11:04:17 EDT X-submission-address: compilers@iecc.com X-moderator-address: compilers-request@iecc.com X-FAQ-and-archives: http://compilers.iecc.com In-Reply-To: <18-05-009@comp.compilers> Xref: csiph.com comp.compilers:2097 On Tuesday, 22 May 2018 18:39:07 UTC+1, Michael Justice wrote: > Is there any preference to writing a compiler in say c instead of say > java, fortran, basic etc? I ask cause i see many of the projects using > either c or c++ instead of other programming languages. > [Mostly people use what they're used to, or in languages that are easy > to bootstrap on the machines they want to use. IBM's Fortran H > compiler was famously written in itself, but I wouldn't write a new > compiler in Fortran because it doesn't have great data structuring or > dynamic storage management. (Yes, I know that Fortran 2008 is a lot > different from Fortran 66.) -John] Per John's remark, the last translator I wrote (a Z280 cross-assembler) was in C (and bison) principally because that's what I usually write in! In the early '80s I wrote 2 translatory things in ZX Spectrum Basic. (The Speccy was the only computer I had access to.) About 1,000 lines each. Later, I translated 1 in Mallard Basic and the other into Turbo Pascal, both on an Amstrad PCW. The translation from Spectrum Basic to Mallard Basic was a lot harder than the translation to Pascal, which may explain my dim view of Basic! I bet some of my old (later) Spectrum C programs would still compile... though I'd probably have to turn off lots of warnings! I've learnt a few new programming languages in the past 17 years but, in my dotage, I've mostly forgotten them again :-/