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Anders Hejlsberg on Modern Compiler Construction (2016) [video]

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Re: Anders Hejlsberg on Modern Compiler Construction (2016) [video]

#2
This is kinda how the compiler-stuff in Dark is written.

Everything - the editor, semantic analysis, version control, execution engine, everything - all use the same data structures (the same abstract syntax tree).

We use functional data structure everywhere and we do functional updates within the AST all the time; that's even how text entry in the editor updates the program.

Re: Anders Hejlsberg on Modern Compiler Construction (2016) [video]

#5
post #4

Turbo Pascal (which he authored) was quite the accomplishment back in the day - editor and compiler in 64K. Think about that for a minute.

The DOS TP compiler was still at the heart of Delphi 1 supported an inline assembler and reference-based class system, code generator, etc. in less than 43k lines of assembler (it was entirely written in assembler).

(32-bit Delphi 2 switched to a C-based compiler originally written by Peter Sollich. I maintained the front end on that compiler for 6 years; PS followed AH to MS.)

Re: Anders Hejlsberg on Modern Compiler Construction (2016) [video]

#7
This is a great talk, I was struck by how similar some of the high level design goals are to LLVM https://www.aosabook.org/en/llvm.html

I kind of hope Anders moves on from TypeScript soon, he’s done a fantastic job there considering the constraints of JavaScript, but I’d love to see him tackle something new.

Re: Anders Hejlsberg on Modern Compiler Construction (2016) [video]

#8
It sounds like that content-addressed code as in the Unison language https://www.unisonweb.org/ could end up facilitating the design of a very effective IDE since the language can naturally generate an immutable structure by default.

I don't know enough to know if this hunch is correct, I'm wondering if anyone better informed can chime in.

Re: Anders Hejlsberg on Modern Compiler Construction (2016) [video]

#9
post #5
post #4

Turbo Pascal (which he authored) was quite the accomplishment back in the day - editor and compiler in 64K. Think about that for a minute.

The DOS TP compiler was still at the heart of Delphi 1 supported an inline assembler and reference-based class system, code generator, etc. in less than 43k lines of assembler (it was entirely written in assembler). (32-bit Delphi 2 switched to a C-based compiler originally written by Peter Sollich. I maintained the front end on that compiler for 6 years; PS followed AH to MS.)

I got a lot of use out of that in my early career. Thank you.

Re: Anders Hejlsberg on Modern Compiler Construction (2016) [video]

#10
Very interesting, even though we don’t have a compiler in the traditional sense for yazz Pilot as a container image is our output format, many of the points are still valid.

Also very interesting how rosalyn had the idea of compiler as an API, we went in the opposite direction and did not have any extensibility, instead we made the Code editor an API

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