Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!world!esegue!compilers-sender
From: beckmann@das.harvard.edu (Gary Beckmann)
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Subject: Re: time to write a compiler
Keywords: design
Message-ID: <9011091641.AA25357@endor.harvard.edu>
Date: 9 Nov 90 16:41:59 GMT
Sender: compilers-sender@iecc.cambridge.ma.us
Reply-To: beckmann@das.harvard.edu (Gary Beckmann)
Organization: Compilers Central
Lines: 32
Approved: compilers@iecc.cambridge.ma.us

This should maybe go into alt.hack, but since I didn't do it myself
and since I know how long it took I'm sending it to comp.compilers.

This was not a production quality compiler.

I introduced a friend of mine to the wonders of C a few years back.
His company (whose name and location will remain secret--for obvious
reasons as you read on) would not support the buying of a compiler for
his ibm-pc clone.  All he had was basic.  So he wrote a C compiler in
basic.  Took him seven months working on the side.  

He was dissatisfied with the performance of the compiler so he then
proceeded to write a basic compiler in C !! (My neck still aches from
the head-shaking I did when he informed me of his plans.)  That took
him only three months -- he claimed that the speed was due to his
familiarity with basic and the relative simple flavor of basic with
which he was working.

He was pleased with this "project" and decided to port it all to an
Apple II which he had.  This port was never completed-- I believed he
failed due to the radical differences in basic.  

To repeat: this was NOT a production quality compiler (I think he even
had some restrictions on the syntax.

Hope I haven't horrified to many . . . 

					Gary Beckmann
					beckmann@das.harvard.edu
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