RFC: Viper: yet another python implementation

[William Tanksley]

On 15 Aug 1999 23:05:29 GMT, Martijn Faassen wrote:
>John (Max) Skaller <skaller at maxtal.com.au> wrote:

>[type inference, me saying it might be hard, John saying it is doable]

Type inference and native code compilation might be simultaneously
possible if you write Viper (or Swallow) in Pop-11, which in spite of
being a general-purpose language has manyamenities for language
programmers.  Common Lisp, ML, and Prolog are already written in it, and
all compile to native code (and work interactively).

Best of all, Pop-11 is finally free.

>> It is possible the first back end will actually general Ocaml
>> rather than C (since Viper is currently implemented in ocaml).

>Hm, why Ocaml? I don't know this language, though I heard some
>interesting things about it. But it begs the question why you're 
>not using Python itself. One reason may be because Python is too
>slow to build an interpreter, but as you are aiming for a Python compiler
>this can't last. :) And I'd definitely consider at least a C 
>backend for the compiler, because C is so common. Though Ocaml may be
>okay that way too, I don't know.

ML does type inferance.  He's probably using that just so  he gets the
inference free.

>Martijn

-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley