4 ms·

Can you share some of your thoughts how this might be technically possible even with conventional toolchains?

• cxr 6y ago
  I've written about it before, but nothing I've worked on is in a good state that I can point to as an example. A big part of turning the tide is going to be about getting the messaging right, because even with the ability to grandfather in conventional toolchains, it requires a perspective shift/attitude adjustment on the part of developers, and oh boy are developers going to revel in shitting on the idea and downplaying the costs of continuing to do things the same way we always have. It involves non-destructive compilation and the ability to (re)publish tooling for a common platform. I've seen multiple comments here on HN in threads about compiler development where chrisseaton points out that compilers are pure functions. All you really need to do is combine that observation with the observation that we already have a near-universal substrate for doing computation. (And it might help further to recognize that releasing an open source project is fundamentally an act of publication, almost-but-not-quite in the vein of Knuth's literate programming.)