Re: Thoughts and Opinions or something like that

["chris.danx" <chris.danx@ntlworld.com>]

Hi, [posting to others re-instated]

> > Things I'd like from a VM (off the top of my head - I don't use VMs
> > directly and I have no idea whether the following are possible):
> >
> > - garbage collection
> > - support for coroutines (no single stack restrictions)
> > - support for tail recursion
> >
> > (the last two are known problems with the JVM, I believe).
>
>
> Scheme VMs have GC and tail-call optimization. Java VM has threads.
> Icon VM has coroutines (rather: co-expressions). No problems, and
> I would add that it is MUCH easier to provide for a more complicated
> semantics of a language using an interpreter than compiling to
> a native code...

Do you mean just rip out an interpreter and forget the VM idea until later?
That sounds like a good idea.

>
> > If you want to concentrate on your language, rather than writing the VM,
> > you could target an existing machine - apart from the obvious .net and
> > JVM, you might consider C--
>
>
> Sorry, but I am violently against this approach, if you want to do
> something interesting, to learn new paradigms, to have some fun. Using
> existing VPlatforms (BTW, C-- is not one) is good for the portability
> and for the possibility of "selling" it to a wider community, but it
> is a little boring, and you feel like putting yourself voluntarily
> into a somebody else's straitjacket.
>


> ...
>
> "chris danx":
> > and the following "not sure" or "in many paradigms" features
> >
> > -    Units bound to values/variables
> > -    Lists                         []
> > -    Arrays                        <>
>
> Don't neglect reasonable arrays, please, otherwise one day, sooner
> or later you will regret it...
>

What do you mean by reasonable arrays?  What's unreasonable about them?

Chris

>
> Jerzy Karczmarczuk
> Caen, France