Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But... tell me please, ANYONE, who takes part in this inspiring exchange: How many COBOL programs have you written in your life? How many programs in Cobol have you actually SEEN? Shudder. In '86, I had to modify a COBOL code generator, *written in COBOL*. The generated program read some data from a database and printed out zillions of reports; the generated program took more than 24 hours to run, so rarely ever completed successfully, as the machines they ran it on was not all that reliable. So I had to modify the generator to generate 'check-pointing' code, so the reporting program could be restarted from the last checkpoint rather than from the start. Report generation was something that COBOL was rather good at; code generation was an entirely different matter! That first exposure to (untyped) code-generation probably explains why I'm such a big fan of metaocaml these days... That year, I had way more fun figuring out how call-by-name worked in Algol 60, by starting at the generated thunks in the Burroughs 6800 assembly. Nice thing about that machine was that it was a pure stack machine - kind of like the JVM, as a matter of fact. The other nice thing about that machine is that they had completely bootstrapped it, so that there was only an Algol compiler for it, no user-level assembler at all [but a disassembler for debugging]. It had been bootstrapped several years back, or so I was told. Jacques ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
RE: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question
| It's interesting that the article completely fails to mention hbc | which I know they used during the GHC bootstrap. Oh well. :) | | On Nov 11, 2007 2:41 PM, Richard Kelsall [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: | Andrew Coppin wrote: | ...if GHC is written in Haskell, how the heck did they compile GHC in | the first place? Lennart, I'm sure this is my fault, and I do apologise. If we used hbc in the bootstrap, I'd completely forgotten; I thought we'd just used the LML compiler, which is indeed credited. (Perhaps not everyone knows that you wrote the LML compiler too, with Thomas Johnsson, of course. It completely changed the landscape of lazy-functional-language compilers.) What I do remember is that we constantly compared ghc's performance to hbc's, and took ages to catch up! I wish we'd corrected any errors of fact before the paper was published. (It was on the Web for 6 months before publication to accumulate corrections, but errors and omissions remain our fault.) Simon ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
On Sun, 11 Nov 2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: To be a true COBOL replacement, I think that one very important feature is that it is link-compatible with existing COBOL code. You're never going to be able to replace a 6MLOC COBOL monster in any manner other than piecemeal. AFAIK people are replacing code by writing other applications that manipulate the same data as the legacy code but do not link with it. I should ask my wife more about the structure of Peoplesoft. I know it's a mixture of COBOL, PL/SQL, and Peoplecode on the server, and Java on the client... No Haskell in it, though. Tony. -- f.a.n.finch [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://dotat.at/ WEST FAIR ISLE FAEROES SOUTHEAST ICELAND: SOUTHERLY VEERING NORTHWESTERLY 5 TO 7, OCCASIONALLY GALE 8 IN FAEROES AND SOUTHEAST ICELAND. ROUGH OR VERY ROUGH. RAIN OR SHOWERS. MODERATE OR GOOD. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question
No worries. I read the History of Haskell paper twice, but not the final version, I guess. As far as I remember you started the bootstrapping with the ghc built on the LML compiler. But as hbc became available it was soon more reliable and produced better code, so you switched to that until the new ghc could compile itself. That's how I remember it. There's also a bunch of Prelude related code in the ghc libraries that originates with hbc. I've been to lazy to send any bug reports about this. (Just to get a line of attribution.) -- Lennart On Nov 12, 2007 9:33 AM, Simon Peyton-Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: | It's interesting that the article completely fails to mention hbc | which I know they used during the GHC bootstrap. Oh well. :) | | On Nov 11, 2007 2:41 PM, Richard Kelsall [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: | Andrew Coppin wrote: | ...if GHC is written in Haskell, how the heck did they compile GHC in | the first place? Lennart, I'm sure this is my fault, and I do apologise. If we used hbc in the bootstrap, I'd completely forgotten; I thought we'd just used the LML compiler, which is indeed credited. (Perhaps not everyone knows that you wrote the LML compiler too, with Thomas Johnsson, of course. It completely changed the landscape of lazy-functional-language compilers.) What I do remember is that we constantly compared ghc's performance to hbc's, and took ages to catch up! I wish we'd corrected any errors of fact before the paper was published. (It was on the Web for 6 months before publication to accumulate corrections, but errors and omissions remain our fault.) Simon ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping_%28compilers%29 . But I can't say what was the particular method used by GHC. Cya, -- Felipe. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
On Sun, 11 Nov 2007, Andrew Coppin wrote: Somebody just asked me ...if GHC is written in Haskell, how the heck did they compile GHC in the first place? ... and what happens, if they add a new feature, use it in the compiler itself, and then it turns out, that the implementation of the new feature was buggy? ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question
G'day all. Quoting Felipe Lessa [EMAIL PROTECTED]: But I can't say what was the particular method used by GHC. I don't either, but here's a suggested plan of attack: 1. Write a parser for a suitable subset of Haskell, in a closely related language (e.g. Miranda). 2. Write a front-end that translates the subset of Haskell into Miranda. (Because the languages are so close, this is straightforward, if the subset is chosen well.) (Note: You now effectively have a working implementation of a subset of Haskell, since you can reuse Miranda's typechecker and run-time environment. However, it's written in Miranda.) 3. Now start writing a simple Haskell compiler in the subset of Haskell that you have, using the implementation to do the heavy lifting. You can use other external tools as part of the compilation process, too (e.g. C compiler, Perl script, whatever). Keep going until the simple compiler can compile the implementation. 4. Test. A lot. When you're satisfoed, you have successfully bootstrapped, and can ditch your reliance on Miranda. 5. Implement a larger subset of Haskell. Test, rinse and repeat. Cheers, Andrew Bromage ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question
Hello Andrew, Sunday, November 11, 2007, 12:12:50 PM, you wrote: ...if GHC is written in Haskell, how the heck did they compile GHC in the first place? by any other haskell compiler/interpreter -- Best regards, Bulatmailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
Hi ...if GHC is written in Haskell, how the heck did they compile GHC in the first place? GHC was not the first Haskell compiler, hbc was the main compiler at some point, so I suspect they used hbc. There was also lazy ML which I suspect was used to bootstrap hbc - but I'm not sure of the details. ... and what happens, if they add a new feature, use it in the compiler itself, and then it turns out, that the implementation of the new feature was buggy? GHC can be compiled with GHC 5.0 (or something around there). If they add a new feature, they don't use it in GHC for years and years. Thanks Neil ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
GHC can be compiled with GHC 5.0 (or something around there). If they add a new feature, they don't use it in GHC for years and years. *Can* be compiled with GHC 5.0, or *is* compiled? http://haskell.org/ghc/docs/6.8.1/html/users_guide/release-6-8-1.html says that the pointer tagging in 6.8.1 improves most code by 10-15%, and as a result the compiler is also faster, implying that ghc-6.8.1 is used to compile itself. I'm just curious. -Brent ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
Hi GHC can be compiled with GHC 5.0 (or something around there). If they add a new feature, they don't use it in GHC for years and years. *Can* be compiled with GHC 5.0, or *is* compiled? Can. If a feature goes horribly wrong, or a build is entirely broken in some subtle but fundamental way that isn't noticed for ages, then could go back to GHC 5 and bootstrap off that. In reality, its bootstrapped with itself in stages. Thanks Neil ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
On Sun, 2007-11-11 at 07:43 -0500, Brent Yorgey wrote: GHC can be compiled with GHC 5.0 (or something around there). If they add a new feature, they don't use it in GHC for years and years. *Can* be compiled with GHC 5.0, or *is* compiled? Can. The version it is compiled with it always itself because it does a two stage bootstrap. I think for 6.8.x the minimum bootstrap version is now 6.0 or 6.2. Duncan ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question
Andrew Coppin wrote: ...if GHC is written in Haskell, how the heck did they compile GHC in the first place? The paper A History of Haskell: Being Lazy With Class by Paul Hudak, John Hughes, Simon Peyton Jones and Philip Wadler is a good read. http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/papers/history-of-haskell/index.htm A snippet GHC was begun in January 1989 at the University of Glasgow, as soon as the initial language design was fixed. The first version of GHC was written in LML by Kevin Hammond, and was essentially a new front end to the Chalmers LML compiler. This prototype started to work in June 1989, just as Peyton Jones arrived in Glasgow to join the burgeoning functional programming group there. The prototype compiler implemented essentially all of Haskell 1.0 including views (later removed), type classes, the deriving mechanism, the fullmodule system, and binary I/O as well as both streams and continuations. It was reasonably robust (with occasional spectacular failures), but the larger Haskell prelude stressed the LML prelude mechanism quite badly, and the added complexity of type classes meant the compiler was quite a lot bigger and slower than the base LML compiler. ... GHC proper was begun in the autumn of 1989, by a team consisting initially of Cordelia Hall, Will Partain, and Peyton Jones. It was designed from the ground up as a complete implementation of Haskell in Haskell, bootstrapped via the prototype compiler. The only part that was shared with the prototype was the parser, which at that stage was still written in Yacc and C. The first beta release was on 1 April 1991 (the date was no accident), but it was another 18 months before the first full release (version 0.10) was made in December 1992. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
On Sun, Nov 11, 2007 at 11:07:29AM +, Neil Mitchell wrote: Hi ...if GHC is written in Haskell, how the heck did they compile GHC in the first place? GHC was not the first Haskell compiler, hbc was the main compiler at some point, so I suspect they used hbc. There was also lazy ML which I suspect was used to bootstrap hbc - but I'm not sure of the details. Hbc didn't need to be bootstrapped because it isn't written in Haskell - it's written in Lazy ML. Lazy ML would need to be bootstrapped, but since it has (almost?) the same syntax as Standard ML, I suspect the first versions of lml were written in SML. (Can you clarify, L. Augustsson?) Stefan signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
This isn't a question specific to ghc. In general, the process of bootstrapping compilers and porting them to new platforms can be described by T-diagrams. When I did a web search on T-diagrams the first hit I found, http://proglang.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/teaching/compilerbau/2004/T-diagrams.pdf seemed to summarise them well. -- Dan On Nov 11, 2007 1:20 AM, Henning Thielemann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, 11 Nov 2007, Andrew Coppin wrote: Somebody just asked me ...if GHC is written in Haskell, how the heck did they compile GHC in the first place? ... and what happens, if they add a new feature, use it in the compiler itself, and then it turns out, that the implementation of the new feature was buggy? ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
Dan Piponi wrote: This isn't a question specific to ghc. Most certainly not. ;-) (Well, except that I asked where did GHC come from, which is pretty GHC-specific.) However, it seems the general point of confusion is that writing (say) a minimally-working C compiler intuitively seems quite easy (after all, C is an extremely low-level language), whereas the constructs in Haskell bear no resemblence to any machine-level constructs, and it seems unthinkable that you could possibly write such a compiler in anything but Haskell itself. In general, the process of bootstrapping compilers and porting them to new platforms can be described by T-diagrams. When I did a web search on T-diagrams the first hit I found, http://proglang.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/teaching/compilerbau/2004/T-diagrams.pdf seemed to summarise them well. Ooo... interesting. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
Neil Mitchell wrote: Hi bear no resemblence to any machine-level constructs, and it seems unthinkable that you could possibly write such a compiler in anything but Haskell itself. Hugs is written in C. Really? :-. Well anyway, I didn't say it can't be done - I said it *looks* like it can't be done. ;-) (Seriously, how big is Hugs? It must be quite large...) ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
Hi bear no resemblence to any machine-level constructs, and it seems unthinkable that you could possibly write such a compiler in anything but Haskell itself. Hugs is written in C. Really? :-. Really :-) (Seriously, how big is Hugs? It must be quite large...) 56111 lines, with an additional 5917 for the WinHugs bit. Thanks Neil ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question
It's interesting that the article completely fails to mention hbc which I know they used during the GHC bootstrap. Oh well. :) On Nov 11, 2007 2:41 PM, Richard Kelsall [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Andrew Coppin wrote: ...if GHC is written in Haskell, how the heck did they compile GHC in the first place? The paper A History of Haskell: Being Lazy With Class by Paul Hudak, John Hughes, Simon Peyton Jones and Philip Wadler is a good read. http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/papers/history-of-haskell/index.htm A snippet GHC was begun in January 1989 at the University of Glasgow, as soon as the initial language design was fixed. The first version of GHC was written in LML by Kevin Hammond, and was essentially a new front end to the Chalmers LML compiler. This prototype started to work in June 1989, just as Peyton Jones arrived in Glasgow to join the burgeoning functional programming group there. The prototype compiler implemented essentially all of Haskell 1.0 including views (later removed), type classes, the deriving mechanism, the fullmodule system, and binary I/O as well as both streams and continuations. It was reasonably robust (with occasional spectacular failures), but the larger Haskell prelude stressed the LML prelude mechanism quite badly, and the added complexity of type classes meant the compiler was quite a lot bigger and slower than the base LML compiler. ... GHC proper was begun in the autumn of 1989, by a team consisting initially of Cordelia Hall, Will Partain, and Peyton Jones. It was designed from the ground up as a complete implementation of Haskell in Haskell, bootstrapped via the prototype compiler. The only part that was shared with the prototype was the parser, which at that stage was still written in Yacc and C. The first beta release was on 1 April 1991 (the date was no accident), but it was another 18 months before the first full release (version 0.10) was made in December 1992. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
On Nov 11, 2007, at 12:16 , Andrew Coppin wrote: However, it seems the general point of confusion is that writing (say) a minimally-working C compiler intuitively seems quite easy (after all, C is an extremely low-level language), whereas the constructs in Haskell bear no resemblence to any machine-level constructs, and it seems unthinkable that you could possibly write such a compiler in anything but Haskell itself. Er? Languages evolve too; Haskell has several antecedents suitable to bootstrapping it, admittedly with varying levels of pain: LML, Miranda, if you really wanted to you could do it in Scheme or SML (and even Prolog, but keep the Excedrin bottle handy). And as already noted, Hugs is written in C. Again, headache- inducing, but remember that any Turing-equivalent language can be used to implement any other if you're willing to do the work. Expressiveness certainly makes it easier, but nothing (other than sanity...) stops you from writing a Haskell compiler in, say, COBOL. -- brandon s. allbery [solaris,freebsd,perl,pugs,haskell] [EMAIL PROTECTED] system administrator [openafs,heimdal,too many hats] [EMAIL PROTECTED] electrical and computer engineering, carnegie mellon universityKF8NH ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
Expressiveness certainly makes it easier, but nothing (other than sanity...) stops you from writing a Haskell compiler in, say, COBOL. *I* would stop you. Friends don't let friends write in COBOL. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
On Nov 11, 2007 7:00 PM, Brent Yorgey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Expressiveness certainly makes it easier, but nothing (other than sanity...) stops you from writing a Haskell compiler in, say, COBOL. *I* would stop you. Friends don't let friends write in COBOL. +1 QOTW =) -- Felipe. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
Brent Yorgey wrote: Expressiveness certainly makes it easier, but nothing (other than sanity...) stops you from writing a Haskell compiler in, say, COBOL. *I* would stop you. Friends don't let friends write in COBOL. That's the funniest thing I've read today. You literally just woke my mum up by making my laugh. Thanks! :-D ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
Andrew Coppin writes: Brent Yorgey wrote: Expressiveness certainly makes it easier, but nothing (other than sanity...) stops you from writing a Haskell compiler in, say, COBOL. *I* would stop you. Friends don't let friends write in COBOL. That's the funniest thing I've read today. You literally just woke my mum up by making my laugh. Thanks! :-D I would be the last who wanted to spoil such a good joke. But... tell me please, ANYONE, who takes part in this inspiring exchange: How many COBOL programs have you written in your life? How many programs in Cobol have you actually SEEN? Jerzy Karczmarczuk ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
On Nov 11, 2007, at 17:26 , [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Andrew Coppin writes: Brent Yorgey wrote: Expressiveness certainly makes it easier, but nothing (other than sanity...) stops you from writing a Haskell compiler in, say, COBOL. *I* would stop you. Friends don't let friends write in COBOL. That's the funniest thing I've read today. You literally just woke my mum up by making my laugh. Thanks! :-D I would be the last who wanted to spoil such a good joke. But... tell me please, ANYONE, who takes part in this inspiring exchange: How many COBOL programs have you written in your life? How many programs in Cobol have you actually SEEN? I've maintained an accounting system and a material requirements planning system written in COBOL. I've written various random things including a Newton's Method program (because I was taking an entry level computing-for-math course which bored me out of my skull --- wasn't allowed to place out of it, and already knew all of it, so I got my revenge by submitting assignments in random languages). COBOL has its place. Compiler design is *not* it. -- brandon s. allbery [solaris,freebsd,perl,pugs,haskell] [EMAIL PROTECTED] system administrator [openafs,heimdal,too many hats] [EMAIL PROTECTED] electrical and computer engineering, carnegie mellon universityKF8NH ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
I would be the last who wanted to spoil such a good joke. But... tell me please, ANYONE, who takes part in this inspiring exchange: How many COBOL programs have you written in your life? How many programs in Cobol have you actually SEEN? My current project at work has a bunch of legacy COBOL code that is still actively maintained. Thankfully, it is not maintained by me, but I've looked at a lot of it. I'm glad to hear that you found my joke inspiring! -Brent ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
G'day all. Quoting [EMAIL PROTECTED]: But... tell me please, ANYONE, who takes part in this inspiring exchange: How many COBOL programs have you written in your life? As you well know, only one COBOL program has ever been written. The rest are just modifications of it. Actually, a more interesting problem is what you'd replace COBOL with, and how you'd go about it. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a modern language that you could write or rewrite new parts of your COBOL application in, and it all worked seamlessly with what you already had? Cheers, Andrew Bromage ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: G'day all. Quoting [EMAIL PROTECTED]: But... tell me please, ANYONE, who takes part in this inspiring exchange: How many COBOL programs have you written in your life? As you well know, only one COBOL program has ever been written. The rest are just modifications of it. Actually, a more interesting problem is what you'd replace COBOL with, and how you'd go about it. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a modern language that you could write or rewrite new parts of your COBOL application in, and it all worked seamlessly with what you already had? Do you think of something like ABAP? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABAP ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
On 12/11/2007, at 4:32 AM, Neil Mitchell wrote: Hi bear no resemblence to any machine-level constructs, and it seems unthinkable that you could possibly write such a compiler in anything but Haskell itself. Hugs is written in C. Really? :-. Really :-) (Seriously, how big is Hugs? It must be quite large...) 56111 lines, with an additional 5917 for the WinHugs bit. If I remember correctly, the early versions of the Clean compiler were written in C. Then at some stage they re-wrote it in Clean. Cheers, Bernie. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
On 12/11/2007, at 9:26 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But... tell me please, ANYONE, who takes part in this inspiring exchange: How many COBOL programs have you written in your life? How many programs in Cobol have you actually SEEN? I saw a lot of COBOL when I worked for a stock broking company. I was a lowly main frame printer operator, so I didn't have anything to do with the code except print it out. Cheers, Bernie. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
G'day all. I asked: Actually, a more interesting problem is what you'd replace COBOL with, and how you'd go about it. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a modern language that you could write or rewrite new parts of your COBOL application in, and it all worked seamlessly with what you already had? Henning Thielemann replied: Do you think of something like ABAP? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABAP I'd like to respond with some combination of: * I never try to think of ABAP. * No, I said modern language. But the fact is, I know nothing about ABAP apart from having heard of it once. Not that this has ever stopped us having strong opinions, right? To be a true COBOL replacement, I think that one very important feature is that it is link-compatible with existing COBOL code. You're never going to be able to replace a 6MLOC COBOL monster in any manner other than piecemeal. Cheers, Andrew Bromage ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
Henning Thielemann: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Quoting [EMAIL PROTECTED]: ... tell me please: How many COBOL programs have you written in your life? As you well know, only one COBOL program has ever been written. The rest are just modifications of it. Actually, a more interesting problem is what you'd replace COBOL with, and how you'd go about it. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a modern language that you could write or rewrite new parts of your COBOL application in, and it all worked seamlessly with what you already had? Do you think of something like ABAP? A nice mixture of Cobol, SQL, a Report Writer language... Gents, we can continue for years, not knowing where we are going with this discussion. I must say that I got a little nervous. Two days of speculation on what this awful GHC has been bootstrapped from, as if the fellows who *did it* couldn't be asked directly! They read this list, and laugh... Then a ha_ha_ha over the the corpse of Cobol. OK, perhaps not a corpse... Plenty of people, and some companies, like Fujitsu, still predict a bright future for this language. God bless them. Obviously, a primitive, hierarchic database approach to programming is something very far from compilation issues. But, frankly, if you permit a serious remark: I think that there will be a serious breakthrough in the Haskell popularity in the Great World, when Haskell is applied to the construction of a fabulous, optimized ... ... COBOL compiler. Or Fortran, or SQL, or Basic. Or whatever, all *BUT* Haskell. == I have an anecdote for you. Real one. (An anecdote is *not* a joke). During my studies we had to make a small plastic box for some electronic circuit (it was hundred years ago, don't forget...) We bought some pieces of something related to polymethyl methacrylate (for profans: plexiglas, acrylite, whatever). Awful stuff. Too brittle! But, but, we found for it a fabulous usage! When dissolved in some solvent manufactured from ether + acetone + some other tasty beverage, it transformed into a viscous substance which was a *wonderful*, ideal glue, for gluing these damn pieces together. So, the lesson we learnt was the following: we got a substance whose main application was to make out of it a glue to glue itself. Since the boss of the Lab would not appreciate the high level philosophical issue related to our observation, we had to find some other usage of this glue, so we glued his chair to the floor. After this hundred years they still look for the culprit. Jerzy Karczmarczuk ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
Bernie Pope wrote: On 12/11/2007, at 4:32 AM, Neil Mitchell wrote: Hi bear no resemblence to any machine-level constructs, and it seems unthinkable that you could possibly write such a compiler in anything but Haskell itself. Hugs is written in C. Really? :-. Really :-) (Seriously, how big is Hugs? It must be quite large...) 56111 lines, with an additional 5917 for the WinHugs bit. If I remember correctly, the early versions of the Clean compiler were written in C. Then at some stage they re-wrote it in Clean. Cheers, Bernie. You could say they cleaned it up. Mike ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
I have a copy of COBOL for Dummies which I bought as a joke and have never dared read. Mike [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Andrew Coppin writes: Brent Yorgey wrote: Expressiveness certainly makes it easier, but nothing (other than sanity...) stops you from writing a Haskell compiler in, say, COBOL. *I* would stop you. Friends don't let friends write in COBOL. That's the funniest thing I've read today. You literally just woke my mum up by making my laugh. Thanks! :-D I would be the last who wanted to spoil such a good joke. But... tell me please, ANYONE, who takes part in this inspiring exchange: How many COBOL programs have you written in your life? How many programs in Cobol have you actually SEEN? Jerzy Karczmarczuk ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Somewhat random history question - chicken and egg
On 12/11/2007, at 4:08 PM, Michael Vanier wrote: Bernie Pope wrote: If I remember correctly, the early versions of the Clean compiler were written in C. Then at some stage they re-wrote it in Clean. You could say they cleaned it up. It was a dirty job, but now it is self cleaning. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
