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From: gwyn@smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Machine-independent intermediate languages
Message-ID: <8677@smoke.ARPA>
Date: 12 Oct 88 20:24:15 GMT
References: <e2uEl#2ORJzO=eric@snark.uucp> <853@goofy.megatest.uucp> <831@etive.ed.ac.uk> <970@l.cc.purdue.edu>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 10

In article <970@l.cc.purdue.edu> cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
-A portable assembler should have the property that anything which the machine
-can do can be relatively easily described in the language in such a way that
-the resulting object code does what the programmer, understanding the machine
-instructions, timing, and limitations, wants it to do, and how he wants it
-done.

I defy you to come up with one that can be used for all of:
IBM System/38, Burroughs B6700, Motorola MC68000, Intel iAPX432.
Yet C and LISP are (barely) doable for all these architectures.