Re: compiler writing as a career?

Sandra Loosemore <sandra@frogsonice.com> writes:


>> Or is the compiler design market a ghetto of marginally better C++
>> compilers?
>
> It seems like hardly anybody outside of academia is working on
> designing or implementing new high-level languages any more.
Well we tried:
http://www.q-software-solutions.com/q/




Just we had to stop before it really was finished. The problem is that
hardly anyone is willing to spend money on a new programming language
this days. So I can not see any way to produce a new language which
makes economcal sense. Well it definitly has made sense for Sun to
work on Java. But how many millions (billions?) have been spend on
it's development?


C# makes probably very much sense to Microsoft. They can tailor that
language to their Operating systems, and because nearly everyone has
to deal with Windows, they will need to buy their stuff.


Another advantage of C# for Microsoft, there is no such thing like a
standard for that. It seems Microsoft does not like standards not set
by them ;(. Just imagine Microsoft was not able/willing to implement
an ANSI C99 compliant compiler, but they were able to develop a new
language in that time ....


I can not name one new programming language in the last 10 years which
has brought up a new company like Borland. Feel free to correct me
about this.


Of course the field is totally different in academia. I have the
impression that a lot of efforts have been put into functional
programming languages... I do not think I hurt programmign language
developers in that area, but they do not have the need to live from
selling their language...


There seem to exist at least an area where language development still
takes place. In the case that it really supports the main business. It
seems as if Erlang is an example for such a language which was
specifically build for their needs.


Regards
Friedrich

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.