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Comment by duaneb | Hacker News Reader

...no dependencies but x86-64 linux abi, which is a pretty massive hard dependency.

That's not a dependency, that's a limitation: the interpreter is only implemented for one platform right now, but there's no reason why it shouldn't be possible to add support for a new platform without changing the existing code.

What I meant by no dependencies is that I don't aim to use any libraries/toolchains to facilitate the job of executing/compiling the language (or providing runtime support).

Until it can be compiled to 3d prints for fluidic logic [1][2], I think the absurd dependency of requiring electricity, at all, is really going to hold back this language.

[1] Fluidics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [2] Water gates: http://www.blikstein.com/paulo/projects/project_water.html

I know functional programmers favor purity, but it seems reasonable for a compiler to compile its source code in such a way that it can run somewhere. But then again, maybe Haskell programmers would be satisfied with the mere knowledge that their code typechecks...

Don't pitch your software as dependency free if it depends on a certain architecture. There's no need these days with llvm. Otherwise make it clear you actually wrote an arch specific assembler.

Have you read the blog post? It explains why I won't use LLVM and says that the interpreter is written in GAS x86_64.

And I'm not "pitching my software", I'm sharing my side project, with a massive disclaimer that I'm doing it for fun.

Sorry, I shouldn't have implied you were intentionally misleading. I'm simply pointing out that by describing your language as without dependencies, you're just swapping out the explicit IR layer with a hard wired ISA layer (and linux abi), which is no less of a dependency.

I mean, GAS/x86-64 is cool, I enjoy toy languages as much as the next person—I just wouldn't describe it any other way than architecture-specific (and therefore useless to most people) so I don't have to click through if I can't play with it.

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