Re: self-hosting, was Writing A Plain English Compiler

From	anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl)
Newsgroups	comp.compilers
Subject	Re: self-hosting, was Writing A Plain English Compiler
Date	2014-11-12 08:40 +0000
Organization	Institut fuer Computersprachen, Technische Universitaet Wien
Message-ID	<14-11-030@comp.compilers> (permalink)
References	(2 earlier) <14-11-007@comp.compilers> <14-11-014@comp.compilers> <14-11-016@comp.compilers> <14-11-020@comp.compilers> <14-11-028@comp.compilers>

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Richard Hable <portempa@aon.at> writes:
>On 11/09/14 02:16, BartC wrote:
>
>> Self-hosting (implementing a language in itself) is a nice touch, but
>> I don't think it's that important, perhaps because people are
>> realising that the best language to implement a compiler in, is not
>> necessarily the language that is being compiled. Unless of course you
>> are trying to use a single language for everything.)
>
>I think, the main advantage of self-hosting is that it can be used as
>one big unit test: you can compile the compiler with itself, use the
>resulting compiler to compile itself again, and check if the result is
>exactly the same.

Yes, having additional testing for your compiler is one advantage
(although I would not call it a unit test).

Another reason to self-host a compiler is the signal it sends: If you
claim that your language is general-purpose, and you write the
compiler for it in a different language, you are obviously not very
convinced of the capabilities of your language, so why should anybody
else use it?

- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl
anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/

Thread

Writing A Plain English Compiler "Gerry Rzeppa" <gerry.rzeppa@pobox.com> - 2014-11-04 15:50 -0600
  Re: Writing A Plain English Compiler Joshua Cranmer 🐧 <Pidgeot18@verizon.net> - 2014-11-05 00:54 -0600
    Re: Writing A Plain English Compiler "Gerry Rzeppa" <gerry.rzeppa@pobox.com> - 2014-11-06 18:52 -0600
      Re: Writing A Plain English Compiler Joshua Cranmer 🐧 <Pidgeot18@verizon.net> - 2014-11-07 22:54 -0600
        Re: Writing A Plain English Compiler "Gerry Rzeppa" <gerry.rzeppa@pobox.com> - 2014-11-08 02:41 -0600
        Re: Writing A Plain English Compiler "Gerry Rzeppa" <gerry.rzeppa@pobox.com> - 2014-11-08 03:46 -0600
          Re: Writing A Plain English Compiler "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2014-11-09 01:16 +0000
            Re: Writing A Plain English Compiler "Gerry Rzeppa" <gerry.rzeppa@pobox.com> - 2014-11-10 14:37 -0600
            Re: self-hosting, was Writing A Plain English Compiler Richard Hable <portempa@aon.at> - 2014-11-11 19:50 +0100
              Re: self-hosting, was Writing A Plain English Compiler "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2014-11-11 23:33 +0000
                Re: self-hosting, was Writing A Plain English Compiler anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2014-11-12 08:46 +0000
                Re: self-hosting, was Writing A Plain English Compiler "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2014-11-12 11:15 +0000
              Re: self-hosting, was Writing A Plain English Compiler anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2014-11-12 08:40 +0000
    Re: Writing A Plain English Compiler "BartC" <bcas@freeuk.com> - 2014-11-07 11:36 +0000
    Re: Writing A Plain English Compiler George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2014-11-07 16:23 -0500
      Re: Writing A Plain English Compiler Richard Hable <portempa@aon.at> - 2014-11-08 17:22 +0100
      Re: Writing A Plain English Compiler Joshua Cranmer 🐧 <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2014-11-08 10:48 -0600
        Re: language design models, was Writing A Plain English Compiler George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2014-11-09 14:30 -0500
          Re: language design models, was Writing A Plain English Compiler "Gerry Rzeppa" <gerry.rzeppa@pobox.com> - 2014-11-10 03:29 -0600
          Re: Writing A Plain English Compiler Tomasz Kowaltowski <tk@ic.unicamp.br> - 2014-11-10 09:13 -0200
            Re: Writing A Plain English Compiler "Gerry Rzeppa" <gerry.rzeppa@pobox.com> - 2014-11-10 17:19 -0600
      Re: matching tasks to languages, was Writing A Plain English Compiler Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net> - 2014-11-10 15:37 -0800
    Re: Writing A Plain English Compiler Martin Ward <martin@gkc.org.uk> - 2014-11-10 22:56 +0000
  Re: Writing A Plain English Compiler "BartC" <bcas@freeuk.com> - 2014-11-07 11:39 +0000
    Re: Writing A Plain English Compiler "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2014-11-08 00:35 +0000
  Fundamentals for a Compiler and Language (was: Writing A Plain English Compiler) federation2005@netzero.com - 2014-12-29 13:30 -0800

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