Why am I waiting for a C compiler?
Thinking about that I found a posting here from nearly one year ago:
rjo_ said...
... There are a lot of people... who have whole libraries of functions written in C. Some of those libraries are pretty valuable. A C compiler would allow them to slightly modify their code and see for themselves that it works on the Prop... then they would know whether they want to translate the rest of their code and how difficult that might be... and whether they want to optimize their code at the machine level for the Prop.
What RJO_ describes here is called "Natural Benchmarks" ... I had contacts with dozens of people during the last months basically interested in the Propeller. After they fully understood the interaction between SPIN and PASM they came to the conclusion it will not be worth the experiment. Those were microcontroller amateurs (but very professional programmers) as well as project managers who had to take into account their staff's skills...
I could simplify my classes considerably by requesting "good pre-knowledge of C"
I think acceptance will have little to do with the final net performance of the compiler in terms of memory usage and speed.. What is needed is a stable and error free implementation and an easy to use and well documented IDE.
ImageCraft said...
Um,,... I see the assembler and linker spring from thin air, as for the code to support the low level routines (e.g. mul, div). Forget the downloader too, or any tuning of the IDE and library functions. May be they are all "runtime."
And of course the existing compiler internal architecture would just fit to a T with all the possible devices ...
What you are saying is that you are working on much more but a C compiler: You are working on a complete stand alone development system, INCLUDING an assembler and linker and a debugger, not to forget some creative MUL and DIV routines
CJO said...
I am no compiler expert (far from it, in fact), but I can only imagine that creating a compiler is a HUGE task.
When I was a kid, and without any training or help, I wrote a BASIC compiler in BASIC in a few days.
It translated programs into small fast binary strings of assembly opcodes, as that was simply all I thought it should do.
> When I was a kid, and without any training or help, I wrote a BASIC compiler in BASIC in a few days.
> It translated programs into small fast binary strings of assembly opcodes, as that was simply all I thought it should do.
And then, what is your point? I and many others have done what you did. C is not BASIC; writing a C
compiler is much much harder than writing a BASIC compiler. Further, the Prop has some unique architectural
features that make it somewhat different from the "normal" C target. Finally, documenting, testing, and
writing the appropriate runtime is a very large task.
I'm sure ImageCraft will produce their product in good time, but I would not underestimate the size of the task
they have taken on.
Yeah, I apologize for flying off the handle. What you did (the BASIC compiler) is unquestionably impressive.
I hope to see some cool things from that creativity on the Prop, too!
Comments
Thinking about that I found a posting here from nearly one year ago:
What RJO_ describes here is called "Natural Benchmarks" ... I had contacts with dozens of people during the last months basically interested in the Propeller. After they fully understood the interaction between SPIN and PASM they came to the conclusion it will not be worth the experiment. Those were microcontroller amateurs (but very professional programmers) as well as project managers who had to take into account their staff's skills...
I could simplify my classes considerably by requesting "good pre-knowledge of C"
I think acceptance will have little to do with the final net performance of the compiler in terms of memory usage and speed.. What is needed is a stable and error free implementation and an easy to use and well documented IDE.
What you are saying is that you are working on much more but a C compiler: You are working on a complete stand alone development system, INCLUDING an assembler and linker and a debugger, not to forget some creative MUL and DIV routines
It translated programs into small fast binary strings of assembly opcodes, as that was simply all I thought it should do.
> It translated programs into small fast binary strings of assembly opcodes, as that was simply all I thought it should do.
And then, what is your point? I and many others have done what you did. C is not BASIC; writing a C
compiler is much much harder than writing a BASIC compiler. Further, the Prop has some unique architectural
features that make it somewhat different from the "normal" C target. Finally, documenting, testing, and
writing the appropriate runtime is a very large task.
I'm sure ImageCraft will produce their product in good time, but I would not underestimate the size of the task
they have taken on.
I hope to see some cool things from that creativity on the Prop, too!