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From: preston@ariel.rice.edu (Preston Briggs)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.lang.misc
Subject: standard extensions
Message-ID: <1991Feb15.192653.9846@rice.edu>
Date: 15 Feb 91 19:26:53 GMT
References: <1087@kaos.MATH.UCLA.EDU> <14814@lanl.gov>
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>pmontgom@euphemia.math.ucla.edu (Peter Montgomery):
>> The requested operation returns q and/or r, where
>> 
>> 		a*b + c = q*n + r   and   0 <= r < n

jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles) writes:
>You will, unfortunately, recieve little sympathy for this kind of
>request.  The UNIX community, in particular, will accuse you of
>requesting a 'swiss army knife' compiler.

He has my sympathy; it's free.
However, I won't spend much time inventing special syntax
or optimizations for specific problems.  There are however,
many people working on many ways of expressing and implementing
extensible languages.  "They" don't belong to a special club;
everyone is free to join.  It's very simple and fairly popular:

    while (dissatisfied) {
	Design a language (perhaps an extension of another language)

	Implement your language (perhaps hacking an existing compiler
	or building an iterpreter).

	Write many programs in your language to gain experience
	with its limitations.  Try and get others to use it.
    }

Some people repeat the process many times (e.g., Wirth).
Other people have problems they want solved and don't
wish to get pulled into an infinite loop.  They can keep
complaining; but I don't expect to see any results.
Language designers aren't satisfied with existing languages
(or they'd be out of the loop); they're busy - designing,
implementing, testing.  They've got their own agenda.  You
might be able to sneak your pet idea on someone's agenda,
but it's probably expensive.

If you want it done right, ...