Hi,
My name is Dave Shields. I am the co-author -- with Philippe Charles -- of
Jikes.
Released in December 1998, Jikes was IBM's first open-source project. As
part of that effort I helped IBM draft its first open-source license: the
Jikes License. That license was later replaced by the IBM Public License.
Both were approved by OSI.
I am currently the maintainer of Macro SPITBOL. I just completed the port
to Linux, which can be found at http://github.com/daveshields/spitbol-linux.
Almost forty years old, SPITBOL is the most efficient implementation of the
SNOBOL programming language yet created. It is written in a portable
assembly language called Minimal. The language was carefully crafted to
give the implementor great freedom in productng an efficient translation to
the assembly language of the target machine. The runtime unterface to the
OS is written in C.
I would like to port SPITBOL to OS X. As part of that effort, I have paid
-- out of my own pocket -- to become an Apple Developer. I also paide over
a thousand smackeroos to buy a refurbished 13" Macbook. I say after only a
couple of days of use that is the best laptop I have ever used, bar none.
SPITBOL was ported in the 80's and 90's to the Mac, Solaris, and AIX.
I did the port for the CDC 6600 in the mid 70's and was the co-author of
IBM PC Spitbol, released in late 1983.
Though I have used Unix for almost forty years, I am new to OS X, and would
appreciate help from any interested party.
I also plan to port SPITBOL to iOS, esp. the iPhone and iPad. That will be
more challenging, as it will involve learning assembler language for the
processors used in those products. I would of course also appreciate help
from any interested party in this task.
SPITBOL is not only extraordinaly efficient, it is compact. For example, it
contains a mark-sweep compacting garbage collector that takes about 200
lines of code.
The assembler code consists of under 15,000 lines of assembly language once
the comments have been removed. Keeping the comments in doubles the size to
about 30,000 lines of the most impressive assembly-language program I have
ever seen.
Moreover, I -- and others who have used the system -- can attest that no
project is more fun. Not only is using the language, but in working on its
implementation.
By the way, many thanks for all you work on this project.
I wrote my first program in the late 50's, while still in high school. I
have been an active open-source developer for over a decade.
While most folks think that writing software is just a matter of typing
away to implement a new idea, those of us who do write software know there
is *lots* of grunt work involved. Things that, while not exciting, must be
done.
Fink is a great example of such an effort. While some mike think it an easy
task, I spent most of the 70's working on writing portable software while
at the Courant Institute at NYU. Though it is much easier now, it's still
now trivial.
The number of packages you have ported is an extraordinary testament to the
thousands and thousands of hours of programmer time involved.
Thanks again, and keep up your good work.
dave
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