Re: on bootstrapping: introducing Mes

[Mike Bushroe <mbushroe@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jun 21, 2016 at 10:07 AM, Jan Nieuwenhuizen <janneke@gnu.org> wrote:

> Mike Bushroe writes:
>
> Hi!
>
> Ah sorry, not exactly.  I intend to write the initial LISP interpreter
> in binary/hex...the current implementation in C is only intended to be
> an intermediate stage in the development process, i.e., to figure out
> what exactly is needed as a minimal interpreter.  Experimenting using C
> is easier than in assembly and close enough to make change to assembly
> later.
>


> Greetings,
> Jan
>
> --
> Jan Nieuwenhuizen <janneke@gnu.org> | GNU LilyPond http://lilypond.org
> Freelance IT http://JoyofSource.com | Avatar®  http://AvatarAcademy.nl
>

Jan,
  I think I better understand what you are working on now. The vest-pocket
assembly code bootstrap is a great idea for getting Scheme working where
Scheme has never been before. But it may limit the bootstrapping to only
X86 based machines. While the majority of users will be installing onto
that, you might consider something that supposedly is more universal.
Something like Java that is supposed to be available for almost everything
from small embedded systems to the latest and greatest CPUs and OSs. It
would also be a smaller change than C to assembler although is truly very
close to assembler on a good CPU. On the other hand Java is 'yet another
language' and one I have not worked with yet myself. I have done some
assembly programming, even on X86 based machines.

  I enjoyed the compiler course at the university and it sounds like you
are having fun here. And since I never really got a feel for LISP let alone
Lambda functions I doubt I will have any further suggestions that would be
helpful. You are already getting to beyond what I have experience with.

Mike

-- 
"Creativity is intelligence having fun." — Albert Einstein