TinyBASIC is fun and beautifully simple. I wrote a 3-part tutorial for making a TinyBASIC-to-C compiler using Python a few years ago.
Let’s make a Teeny Tiny compiler https://austinhenley.com/blog/teenytinycompiler1.html
I Wrote a Compiler
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Re: I Wrote a Compiler
#12I thought a compiler, with no adjective or caveat, should turn a HLL into machine language. Isn't what this describes—turning BASIC into Go—more accurately described as a "pseudocompiler" or "Go compiler" or somesuch? I know Emacs is always said to have a "bytecode compiler" that processes Elisp code, not a "compiler" per se. Am I mistaken?
This kind of question winds up being the CS equivalent of “is a hotdog a sandwich”. I agree that transpiler is a more accurate term for it and that a hotdog is not a sandwich. But there are lots of languages that start life as compile-to-C things. Many compiled languages today output LLVM IR which is not machine language. Similarly people would probably call javac a compiler, even though it outputs bytecode.
Re: I Wrote a Compiler
#13Love reading these. Keep these blog posts coming!
Re: I Wrote a Compiler
#14TinyBASIC is fun and beautifully simple. I wrote a 3-part tutorial for making a TinyBASIC-to-C compiler using Python a few years ago. Let’s make a Teeny Tiny compiler https://austinhenley.com/blog/teenytinycompiler1.html
I know BASIC is kind of a “bad” language, but there’s something so delightful about it. If we’re plugging TinyBASIC projects that others might find interesting, I made an MMO TinyBASIC REPL the other day: http://10klob.com/
Re: I Wrote a Compiler
#15I wrote a full fledged interpreter by hand for a vintage BASIC language. I called it Basice (I'm Icemanind, so Basice is a play on BASIC and Iceman). It's a little outdated now though. I wrote it using C# and it doesn't use any external libraries, like yacc or flex. It's all by hand. You can see it at https://github.com/icemanind/Basice
Re: I Wrote a Compiler
#16This is very similar to the project I have in Chapter 2 of my new book Computer Science from Scratch [0]. It's also Tiny BASIC without INPUT. I called it NanoBASIC. But it's an interpreter not a compiler. This tutorial is a nice starting point. The chapter is much more comprehensive, so if you want to get into the weeds, I can recommend my own chapter (of course). But it's in Python, not Go. The code is on GitHub[1]. But this tutorial is great too.
Re: I Wrote a Compiler
#17I thought a compiler, with no adjective or caveat, should turn a HLL into machine language. Isn't what this describes—turning BASIC into Go—more accurately described as a "pseudocompiler" or "Go compiler" or somesuch? I know Emacs is always said to have a "bytecode compiler" that processes Elisp code, not a "compiler" per se. Am I mistaken?
The standard term for this kind of compiler is "transpiler", afaik. Here's the Wikipedia page for such things, which also taught me several other names for them: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-to-source_compiler
The standard term for "transpiler" is "compiler", though.
Re: I Wrote a Compiler
#18> Yes, this is what I do for fun.
Don't we all? ;-)
Re: I Wrote a Compiler
#19>The original authors of yacc were Mike Lesk and Eric Schmidt - yes that Eric Schmidt. Incorrect, they were authors of lex. yacc was authored by Stephen Johnson. Surprising to me is all the authors are still around, even though the tools are over 50 years old!. Shows how young computer science field is.
Who coauthored "The C Programming Language" anyway? Oh right, prof. Kernighan.
Re: I Wrote a Compiler
#20TinyBASIC is fun and beautifully simple. I wrote a 3-part tutorial for making a TinyBASIC-to-C compiler using Python a few years ago. Let’s make a Teeny Tiny compiler https://austinhenley.com/blog/teenytinycompiler1.html
I know BASIC is kind of a “bad” language, but there’s something so delightful about it. If we’re plugging TinyBASIC projects that others might find interesting, I made an MMO TinyBASIC REPL the other day: http://10klob.com/
BASIC is an amazing language that computing novices (including humanities majors) could learn in an afternoon, that could be efficiently compiled or compactly interpreted, that was small enough to support dozens of interactive users on a mainframe or minicomputer, or to fit into a tiny 8-bit microcomputer – and yet was largely equivalent to FORTRAN in terms of its expressive power.
I think the closest modern equivalents might be Python (for easy onramp and scalability from microcontrollers to supercomputers) and JavaScript (for pure ubiquity in every device with a web browser.)
I wonder if there is a modern-ish (?) environment that can match Visual BASIC in terms of easy GUI app programming. Perhaps Python or Tcl with Tk (Qt seems harder) or maybe Delphi, or perhaps a modern Smalltalk.