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Yes, I've written tools for existing languages, and found just getting the parser right to be a challenge, be it with Emacs highlighting, flex/bison, what have
by SloopJon 12y ago
Yes, I've written tools for existing languages, and found just getting the parser right to be a challenge, be it with Emacs highlighting, flex/bison, what have you. Real languages aren't as tidy as the textbook examples.
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoWhen I do PL these days, I always start with the editor; e.g. see: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/smcdirm/managedtime.aspx http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/smcdirm/managedti... Co-designing your editor with your language allows for a better experience. You are right in that all of this is basically undocumented in textbooks. Even their presentation on on parsing is mostly unhelpful (if you want an error tolerant incremental parser for your editor, recursive descent works very well).
- handojin 12y agoThat is really cool. This focus on time is what draws me into the whole clojure/datomic world. We're ill equipped to handle it. Tools help. Does time itself reveal itself as the horizon of being?
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoWe can manage time one way or the other. Clojure does it with a focus on immutability, I'm doing it with a focus on mutability :) One thing that is cool is how time is related to observation, the same thing that happens in quantum entanglement. If you don't observe the state of an object, time doesn't really exist.