On 3/16/14, 5:42 PM, Asman01 wrote:
I was reading Walter's article where he use this term and explain what is it. He did a clear explanation abount what what it does. But where come from actually this term? I can't find anything related with a lot of keyword combinations on google/bing. And isn't only me want to know about origin of this term (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20252876/wanted-good-definition-of-the-term-lowering-in-the-context-of-compilers)
I introduced the term "lowering" to our community as the word was commonly used in the programming languages group at University of Washington (led at the time by Craig Chambers and Dan Grossman). It's commonly used in compiler backend circles, see e.g. http://goo.gl/FEVypJ.
It generally means the process of translating a higher-level language with many capabilities into a simpler, lower-level language. The latter could be an intermediate language, machine code, or even a reduced dialect of the higher-level language (as is the case for the way it's often used in D).
Andrei
