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Indeed, building a programming language that is supposed to be for systems programming then it makes sense for it to be able to be ergonomic to write compilers
by capableweb 5y ago
Indeed, building a programming language that is supposed to be for systems programming then it makes sense for it to be able to be ergonomic to write compilers in. But if you're building a programming language for building UIs (or any other specific use case), then making it bootstrapping it's own compiler in it's own language seems like a waste of time.
- brundolf 5y agoI'm not sure I'd say "waste of time", just that it might pull the language in some directions it might not ought to go in. It would still benefit from the battle-testing, but there might be other "dogfooding" projects that would be more appropriate; the compiler is just a convenient one since you're already doing that work.
- pdpi 5y agoI don’t think it’s a waste of time. Compilers are demanding projects where you need to be intimately familiar with both target and host languages. A self-hosting compiler means that target and host are the same language, and reduces that source of friction.