Re: [Axiom-developer] Re: bootstrap Meta/Boot

[C Y]

--- "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <address@hidden> wrote:

> Well, considering the long history of Axiom and its predecessors,
> that's not surprising. But once you *have* Axiom capable of compiling
> itself, do you really need the underlying scaffolding, or can you
> take it down and just use the building?

You take it down only if you are sure you will never again need to
re-build the building.

I am quite sure the original team probably reached the same conclusion,
but the fact remains that the original system had to be re-bootstrapped
by Tim for public release.  So we already have one example where the
loss of the scaffolding was a major inconvenience.
 
> -- I much prefer, as you seem to, higher-level abstractions in
> programming languages. You may need a hierarchy of languages to get
> there, but do you need it forever?

The bootstrap problem occurs when languages become divorced from their
original implementations in another language - i.e. you need a working
binary and have no source to compile to create that binary that doesn't
require the same working binary.  If you can guarantee that you will
always have a running cross-compiler this is workable, but it seems a
dangerous assumption to make.

Interesting you should mention Forth, by the way - in the discussion of
what constitutes the minimum path for a "hard bootstrap" on
comp.lang.lisp Forth was suggested as a good way to get the most
functionality for the least amount of low level machine/assembly
coding.  I'm currently trying to track down some older work that was
done on implementing Lisp in Forth.

Cheers,
CY


       
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