Path: csiph.com!aioe.org!adore2!news.iecc.com!.POSTED.news.iecc.com!nerds-end
From: Kaz Kylheku <157-073-9834@kylheku.com>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Subject: Re: Compiler implementation language preference ?
Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2018 23:44:56 +0000 (UTC)
Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server
Lines: 35
Sender: news@iecc.com
Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com
Message-ID: <18-12-011@comp.compilers>
References: <5e1b3cd8-ad2a-d8f0-ec00-ed0a507b62f5@gkc.org.uk> <18-12-009@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="19216"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@iecc.com"
Keywords: tools, history
Posted-Date: 21 Dec 2018 20:44:21 EST
X-submission-address: compilers@iecc.com
X-moderator-address: compilers-request@iecc.com
X-FAQ-and-archives: http://compilers.iecc.com
Xref: csiph.com comp.compilers:2139

On 2018-12-20, Martin Ward <martin@gkc.org.uk> wrote:
> On 19/12/18 19:54, Aaron Gray wrote:
>> Pity there are no real compiler-compilers anymore, hint-hint, I am
>> working on one to rule them all ;)
>>
>> [Please don't say you've invented another UNCOL. -John]
>
> I may be wrong but read Aaron's message to mean that he is
> working on a domain specific language for writing compilers,
> in the style of Language Oriented Programming,
> rather than a universal intermediate program representation language,
> which is what UNCOL attempted to be.
>
> The original paper on Language Oriented Programming:
>
> http://www.gkc.org.uk/martin/papers/middle-out-t.pdf

From that:

>> "In the case of the FermaT tool, the lowest level translator and
>> support library consists of 2–3,000 lines of LISP code. This
>> translates from low-level META WSL to LISP, all the rest of the system
>> is written in META WSL. To port the system to a new version of LISP, or
>> even to a new base language such as C, only requires rewriting the
>> lowest level translator: and this is a comparatively small task–in fact,
>> the first version of the translator was wr itten in less than three man
>> days. The FermaT system is currently being ported from a Unix environm
>> ent to a PC environment, using C rather than LISP as the implementation
>> language."

That language hopping aspect reminds me of MAL (Make A Lisp): a project
which bootstraps the same Lisp dialect (its own) in numerous different
languages (currently 74):

https://github.com/kanaka/mal