At this point, BitC is far enough along that we can and should start self-hosting the compiler. For purely selfish reasons, there is one remaining issue that I would like to resolve before we do that, which is the final decision(s) about surface syntax. It is time to abandon parenthesis. The surface syntax is mostly simple; I just need a brief block of time to address it, and there is one particular issue that I will solicit opinions about here.
The main things that we need in order to self-host the BitC compiler are: 1. An interface module for the libicu components that we rely on. 2. A parser generator that can handle actions written in BitC. 3. A final choice of surface syntax. 4. An AST compiler similar to ASTmaker that emits BitC code. Because we will not be sticking with an S-expression syntax, and also because of the issue of static typing, LISP is definitely NOT the right way to go at this point (and never was). I actually did do some prototyping in Scheme at one point, but it quickly became apparent that Scheme wasn't the right tool for this. shap
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