Re: Ada OOP alternatives?

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Adam Beneschan" <adam@irvine.com> wrote in message 
news:c721e61c-464a-4ace-8aa8-7b051794fa7c@y38g2000hsy.googlegroups.com...
...
> It seems to me that it ought to be possible to have a compiler that
> compiles individual source files into some sort of "intermediate"
> representation that is not quite machine code, and then when the
> complete executable is built, the intermediate code is then used to
> generate the actual code.
...
> But I realize that I'm just dreaming...

Why? That's the basic design of Janus/Ada. As I've previously said, we never 
built that version of the back-end because the machines back in the day 
couldn't handle it, and haven't done it more recently simply because there 
isn't enough hours in the day. But that's how inlining should work.

One could argue that this is exactly how Java works, after all. Except there 
they never bother to compile it at all (at least until runtime). Indeed, one 
could make the argument that there isn't anymore need to compile at 
link-time than there is in the current file-at-a-time scheme.

                                           Randy.