On 09/29/2011 11:44 AM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
On Thursday, September 29, 2011 13:35:03 Gor Gyolchanyan wrote:
Right. And if the compiler is written in D, it's much more readable
and maintainable and it will gain much more volunteer manpower, since
it's so easy to work on.
While the compiler probably would be easier to work on if it were written in
D, I honestly don't think that it would be enough of an improvement to really
make that much of a difference in volunteer manpower, unless we were dealing
with a bunch of potential volunteers who knew D but not C++. The issue with
working on the compiler is understanding what the code is trying to do and how
it works, not the fact that it's written C++ rather than D.
D code is usually more understandable. But I agree that a 1 to 1 port of
DMD is quite pointless.
The primary advantage is in having a lexer and parser that any program can
then use, because then it makes it much easier to create tools which can
process D code. The compiler itself isn't really going to gain much by being
in D.
Writing a D parser from scratch in D is quite easy. I think we should
drop the "guaranteed equivalent to DMDs parser because it is a direct
port of it" requirement.
