Path: csiph.com!weretis.net!feeder6.news.weretis.net!news.misty.com!news.iecc.com!.POSTED.news.iecc.com!nerds-end From: "minf...@arcor.de" Newsgroups: comp.compilers Subject: Re: Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its implementation? RPN? Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2022 04:54:53 -0800 (PST) Organization: Compilers Central Sender: news@iecc.com Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com Message-ID: <22-11-017@comp.compilers> References: <22-09-026@comp.compilers> <22-10-025@comp.compilers> <29190_1668508275_63736A72_29190_327_1_22-11-007@comp.compilers> <22-11-009@comp.compilers> <22-11-013@comp.compilers> <22-11-015@comp.compilers> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Injection-Info: gal.iecc.com; posting-host="news.iecc.com:2001:470:1f07:1126:0:676f:7373:6970"; logging-data="12834"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@iecc.com" Keywords: syntax, history, comment Posted-Date: 16 Nov 2022 08:16:44 EST X-submission-address: compilers@iecc.com X-moderator-address: compilers-request@iecc.com X-FAQ-and-archives: http://compilers.iecc.com In-Reply-To: <22-11-015@comp.compilers> Xref: csiph.com comp.compilers:3245 gah4 schrieb am Mittwoch, 16. November 2022 um 11:57:18 UTC+1: > The Sun boot roms also use Forth, or something Forth-like as the > built-in control language. > [The FreeBSD boot also uses Forth for boot-time configuration. It's a nice > little language but we're drifting away from compilers. -John] You are right when it would only be about Forth, but we were musing about simplified compilation without all the usual ballast. So the capability in a (meta)language for compile-time execution comes into play. Forth is only one example. TCL would be my next candidate. I don't know Seed7 but its author claims to be able to e.g. redefine and create new operators which means new semantics. [There was a vogue in the 1970s for extensible languages like EL1 at Harvard and IMP72 at Yale. You could add new grammar rules on the fly. What that meant was that no two programs were written in the same language and they were unreadable and often undebuggable. OOP, which lets you add new types and semantics without changing the syntax, turned out to be a lot more useful. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_programming -John]