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0 pointsaap_4y ago0 comments

The first B compiler was actually written in TMG, and once it was bootstrapped that way in B itself. BCPL was only the inspiration for the language.

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sramsay4y ago

Wow, TMG was a new one for me. From the Wiki article on it:

"Douglas McIlroy ported TMG to an early version of Unix. According to Ken Thompson, McIlroy wrote TMG in TMG on a piece of paper and "decided to give his piece of paper his piece of paper," hand-compiling assembly language that he entered and assembled on Thompson's Unix system running on PDP-7."

We are not worthy, friends. We are not worthy.

kragen4y ago

I did pretty much the same thing with https://github.com/kragen/peg-bootstrap/blob/master/peg.md, although admittedly hand-compiling to JS was noticeably less work than hand-compiling to assembly language would have taken. My friend Dave did something similar with Val Schorre's META-II: https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2724586 (missing the figures for some reason, so see:) doi:10.1145/2697401

deterministic4y ago

Ehh...I taught myself machine code programming when I was 11. Hand translating programs I wrote in Assembler on paper to byte code and typing it in byte by byte. And I am no programming God. So it might be less hard than you think :)

ForOldHack4y ago

We are merely observing the footsteps of compiler gods.

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