Doing it better 2000-06-07
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From Reuben.

> On the contrary, the whole advantage of many systems is that they do
> impose restrictions. I agree it would be anti-social not to provide proper
> marshalling primitives, but I'm buggered if I'm going to let language
> inter-working dominate the design of the language!

Sure. But I'm not designing a language.

> The language used for data interchange is arguably the thing which defines
> the language, at least conceptually. Are you really happy to reinvent C
> with superficial changes? I don't think you are.

I'm not. I'm providing a machine abstraction, not a language. On most
machines, you can manipulate bytes.

> No, they need only come with libraries to do the conversions.

Yes, but it's rather breaking sMite's universality if you can't write
conversion code in it.

This is not a big deal. Crucial point: I'm trying to write a universal
execution platform, that works with existing languages and hardware. I'm
not trying to design new hardware, or a new language. I'm certainly not
trying to invent something new, but just distil what is there already.

--
http://sc3d.org/rrt/ | wit, n.  educated insolence (Aristotle)