Re: language design references wanted

henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Thu, 5 Sep 1991 16:16:32 GMT

          From comp.compilers

Related articles
[3 earlier articles]
Re: language design references wanted grosen@mhd1.moorhead.msus.edu (1991-08-26)
Re: language design references wanted murphy@mips.com (1991-08-29)
Re: language design references wanted preston@helena.rice.edu (1991-08-30)
Re: language design references wanted wendl@munich.enet.dec.com (1991-08-30)
Re: language design references wanted salomon@ccu.umanitoba.ca (1991-09-03)
Re: language design references wanted ea08+@andrew.cmu.edu (Eric A. Anderson) (1991-09-04)
Re: language design references wanted henry@zoo.toronto.edu (1991-09-05)
Re: language design references wanted salomon@ccu.umanitoba.ca (1991-09-06)
| List of all articles for this month |

Newsgroups: comp.compilers
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Keywords: design
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: 91-08-147 91-08-149
Date: Thu, 5 Sep 1991 16:16:32 GMT

preston@helena.rice.edu (Preston Briggs) writes:
>At any rate, the local lore is that compiler writers should _not_ design
>languages. Instead, they should be confined to tiny cages and forced to
>implement the language as specified, dammit...


It is important to decide what your objectives are. If you are building
a compiler for more or less an existing language, it is a mistake to get
involved in redesigning the language at the same time. The folks who did
PL/C, oh so many moons ago, summed it up well (approximately): "in the
end we decided to implement the language unchanged, warts and all, because
it became clear that otherwise we would spend all our time and effort on
language design instead of implementation".


Language design, although fun, is an enormous time sink. Doing it well is
much harder than it looks.
--
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
--


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