[KLUG Members] Software Theory

[Jamie McCarthy]

peter@caresswm.org (Peter Buxton) writes:

> language designers who regard their programming language as
> complete and perfect only when they can write the language
> compiler in the language itself

As proof of the sublime perfection of my favorite language,
I submit for your consideration the ** complete ** source code
to a perl compiler (not to mention an interpreter and a runtime
environment), as expressed in perl itself:

    eval $my_perl_code;

I like calling this the "Ourouborous Theory of Compiler Design."
The snake starts out clever and all-encompassing.  As it swallows
its own tail, it goes faster and faster, but its guts get mashed into
a messy, incomprehensibly dense sludge that no one will ever be able
to look at even if they wanted to which they don't.  Soon it is
forgotten and the world moves on to the next religion du jour.
This is exactly the lifecycle progression of all compilers.
--
 Jamie McCarthy
 jamie@mccarthy.vg