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diff --git a/content/posts/2006-01-12-charming-ruby-compiler-not-so-charming.html b/content/posts/2006-01-12-charming-ruby-compiler-not-so-charming.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f1f3f7a --- /dev/null +++ b/content/posts/2006-01-12-charming-ruby-compiler-not-so-charming.html @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +--- +date: "2006-01-12T21:10:33Z" +title: Charming Ruby Compiler, Not So Charming +--- + +<p>Earlier this month on the <code>ruby-core</code> mailing list there was a post +about the <a href="http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~d00farre/thesis/">Charming Ruby Compiler (CRC)</a>, which looks promising. +It's a preliminary <a href="http://ruby-lang.org/">Ruby</a> to <a href="http://cminusminus.org/">C--</a> compiler. Unfortunately, it's +also got <a href="http://gnome.org/">GNOME</a>-style dependencies (i.e. from hell). You can grab a +pre-compiled binary for <a href="http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~d00farre/thesis/">CRC</a>, but the <a href="http://cminusminus.org/">C--</a> compiler itself depends +on both <a href="http://caml.inria.fr/">Objective CAML</a> and <a href="http://lua.org/">Lua</a>.</p> + +<p>For some reason, I just don't feel like installing the runtime and +development libraries for <em>three</em> separate programming languages just to +try out a preliminary compiler for <em>one</em> programming language.</p> + +<p>The thread wasn't a total loss, however. I learned about both <a href="http://nekovm.org/">Neko</a> +and <a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/">LLVM</a>, and they both look interesting. <a href="http://nekovm.org/">Neko</a> is a lightweight +<acronym title='Virtual Machine'>VM</acronym> for dynamic languages +(like <a href="http://ruby-lang.org/">Ruby</a> and <a href="http://python.org/">Python</a>) written in <acronym title='American +Netional Standards Institute'>ANSI</acronym> C. Instead of targeting +assembly, and compiling that to bytecode, <a href="http://nekovm.org/">Neko</a> provides it's own +low-level programming language with primitives for things like strings, +numbers, and objects. Seems like <a href="http://nekovm.org/">Neko</a> has a lower barrier to entry +than <a href="http://parrotcode.org/">Parrot</a>, although the lack of an encoding attribute for string +elements kind of bothers me -- maybe that's something higher-level +languages are supposed to take care of?</p> + +<p>On another note, I've generated the +<acronym title='HyperText Markup Language'>HTML</acronym> for +this post using <a href="http://www.deveiate.org/projects/BlueCloth">BlueCloth</a>, a <a href="http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/">Markdown</a> processor for <a href="http://ruby-lang.org/">Ruby</a>. +If you can get over the funky bracket syntax for links, <a href="http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/">Markdown</a> +does seem to make writing posts a whole lot easier. All I need now is a +decent post-processor for acronyms and I'd be set. Maybe I'll come up +with something for my new page backend, if it ever gets completed.</p> + + |