Re: [Cardinal-dev] Just for fun...

[Phil Tomson]

On 8 May 2002, Erik [ISO-8859-1] B?gfors wrote:

> I created a mini-basic to parrot assembler compiler this weekend.  It's
> not done yet but it was a fun project.  Of course the compiler is
> written in ruby.
Could you post it somewhere on the web so we can take a look?

Could you post a description of the steps you followed to do this?

>
> So it's definitely possible to write the compiler in ruby if we like
> (not that anyone thought otherwise :) )
>
> The main reason I wanted to do this is for fun and learning more about
> compilers and parrot.  I didn't take the compiler construction class in
> school unfortunately, so this was all new to me.

Yeah, I think there are several of us who didn't take that compiler
construction class ;-)

>
> Creating this compiler gave me 1000's of question about how the language
> Independence in parrot can be possible.
>
> Looking at .Net and how it tries to be language independent one can see
> that all languages has to be modified a little bit (or alot).  For
> example they all need to be (at least partially) object oriented and
> they can't do multiple inheritance. I've heard people saying that VB.NET
> feels like C# with another syntax.  I know I don't want my ruby to
> change lots just because It's running on parrot.

From what I've seen of .NET it's not very amenable to dynamic languages.
It seems that Parrot will be much more flexible than .NET.  I suspect that
early versions of Cardinal will not be fully Ruby compliant, but that as
Parrot matures and Cardinal matures we'll be able to be  very compliant
with Ruby.

BTW: I had really hoped to have dug into Parrot more than I have by now,
but I needed to go back and do some clean-up work on RHDL because a
potential employer showed some interest in it...  the interview is tomorrow.

Phil