4 ms·

Pretty significant detail though, as no one has done either.. also "anyone" is fairly strong, building decent compilers and interpreters is pretty difficult

pjmlp 10y ago
Anyone with a decent CS degree should be able to produce working compilers and interpreters, otherwise it wasn't a decent degree. Of course, writing very good ones is a different matter.
- Ralfp 10y ago
  You are now commiting the moving the goalpost fallacy, arguing first that something is irrevelant because it may be changed larter, and then moving on to argue that every CS degree guy could just write it.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    I wrote my first compiler using Turbo Pascal for MS-DOS at the age of 17, before getting into the university. A CS degree just makes it easier.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >Anyone with a decent CS degree should be able to produce working compilers and interpreters, otherwise it wasn't a decent degree. Which would be useless for production without several years of maturity, a tools ecosystem, and a community adopting them -- and of course continued support. So this is mostly theoretical.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    So now compilers should only be written, if v1.0 is production ready?! > So this is mostly theoretical. No, it is setting the facts straight about the widespread ignorance of mixing languages with implementations.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      >So now compilers should only be written, if v1.0 is production ready?! No, but they are only relevant for the purposes of the discussion, that is, when considering whether to adopt a language platform based on if it's AOT or interpreted etc, when they are v1.0. That somebody can always make an interpreter for an AOT language, for example, is nothing people care about when checking whether to use a language for their projects. It's what's there that matters.
      - pjmlp 10y ago
        Turning on cynic mode, I would say the only thing that matters is which company backs a programming language and only languages offered on their OS SDKs are relevant. Anything else will just add entropy and development costs to projects, due to 2nd class tooling and lack of libraries on the target platform. Then it doesn't matter how the code gets compiled at all.
        coldtea 10y ago
        >Turning on cynic mode, I would say the only thing that matters is which company backs a programming language and only languages offered on their OS SDKs are relevant. That's true, but for application programming. For the server side there are other considerations. WhatsApp can get away with using Erlang for example, and still get the sweet billions.
- maxpert 10y ago
  I think every CS graduate does that as part of Compiler Construction course so rather than questioning people's degree I would say doing these advanced features is not a trivial task.
josevalim 10y ago
There is an AOT native compiler that ships as part of Erlang called HiPE. The original project has been incorporated into Erlang 15 years ago: https://www.it.uu.se/research/group/hipe/ https://www.it.uu.se/research/group/hipe/ The current setup is also mentioned on Wikipedia's page about AOT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahead-of-time_compilation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahead-of-time_compilation
- timClicks 10y ago
  I was wondering if I should have mentioned HiPE in my comment.. but I couldn't remember if it was fully native. It was a few years ago that I was learning Erlang/Elixir.

pjmlp 10y ago

Anyone with a decent CS degree should be able to produce working compilers and interpreters, otherwise it wasn't a decent degree. Of course, writing very good ones is a different matter.

Ralfp 10y ago
You are now commiting the moving the goalpost fallacy, arguing first that something is irrevelant because it may be changed larter, and then moving on to argue that every CS degree guy could just write it.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  I wrote my first compiler using Turbo Pascal for MS-DOS at the age of 17, before getting into the university. A CS degree just makes it easier.
coldtea 10y ago
>Anyone with a decent CS degree should be able to produce working compilers and interpreters, otherwise it wasn't a decent degree. Which would be useless for production without several years of maturity, a tools ecosystem, and a community adopting them -- and of course continued support. So this is mostly theoretical.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  So now compilers should only be written, if v1.0 is production ready?! > So this is mostly theoretical. No, it is setting the facts straight about the widespread ignorance of mixing languages with implementations.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >So now compilers should only be written, if v1.0 is production ready?! No, but they are only relevant for the purposes of the discussion, that is, when considering whether to adopt a language platform based on if it's AOT or interpreted etc, when they are v1.0. That somebody can always make an interpreter for an AOT language, for example, is nothing people care about when checking whether to use a language for their projects. It's what's there that matters.
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      Turning on cynic mode, I would say the only thing that matters is which company backs a programming language and only languages offered on their OS SDKs are relevant. Anything else will just add entropy and development costs to projects, due to 2nd class tooling and lack of libraries on the target platform. Then it doesn't matter how the code gets compiled at all.
      - coldtea 10y ago
        >Turning on cynic mode, I would say the only thing that matters is which company backs a programming language and only languages offered on their OS SDKs are relevant. That's true, but for application programming. For the server side there are other considerations. WhatsApp can get away with using Erlang for example, and still get the sweet billions.
maxpert 10y ago
I think every CS graduate does that as part of Compiler Construction course so rather than questioning people's degree I would say doing these advanced features is not a trivial task.

josevalim 10y ago

There is an AOT native compiler that ships as part of Erlang called HiPE. The original project has been incorporated into Erlang 15 years ago: https://www.it.uu.se/research/group/hipe/ https://www.it.uu.se/research/group/hipe/ The current setup is also mentioned on Wikipedia's page about AOT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahead-of-time_compilation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahead-of-time_compilation

timClicks 10y ago
I was wondering if I should have mentioned HiPE in my comment.. but I couldn't remember if it was fully native. It was a few years ago that I was learning Erlang/Elixir.