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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 22/11/2012 11:52 AM, Brandon Allbery
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAKFCL4Wg73xPTN+JDwz_fj+kTWxt3hOFQhzCAXR0Sket5uQbtA@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 7:56 AM, Jacques Carette <span
dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:carette@mcmaster.ca" target="_blank">carette@mcmaster.ca</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
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<div class="im">On 20/11/2012 6:08 PM, Richard O'Keefe
wrote:<br>
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<div class="im">
On 21/11/2012, at 4:49 AM, <<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:citb@lavabit.com" target="_blank">citb@lavabit.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
<br>
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<div class="im">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
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Well, I don't know. Would it save some time? Why
bother with a core language? <br>
</blockquote>
For a high level language (and for this purpose, even
Fortran 66 counts as<br>
"high level") you really don't _want_ a direct
translation from source code<br>
to object code. You want to eliminate unused code and
you want to do all<br>
sorts of analyses and improvements. It is *much* easier
to do all that to<br>
a small core language than to the full source language.<br>
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</blockquote>
<br>
Actually, here I disagree. It might be much 'easier' for
the programmers to do it for a small core language, but it
may turn out to be much, much less effective. I
'discovered' this when (co-)writing a partial evaluator for
Maple: </blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>You're still using a core language, though; just with a
slightly different focus than Haskell's. I already
mentioned gcc's internal language, which similarly is larger
(semantically; syntactically it's sexprs). What combination
is more appropriate depends on the language and the compiler
implementation.</div>
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</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
Right, we agree: it is not 'core language' I disagreed with, it is
'smaller core language'. And we also agree that smaller/larger
depends on the eventual application. But 'smaller core language' is
so ingrained as "conventional wisdom" that I felt compelled to offer
evidence against this bit of folklore.<br>
<br>
Jacques<br>
<br>
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