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leah & nybbles & bytes, oh my! /
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2024-06-28 05:13:22

leah & nybbles & bytes, oh my! on Nostr: what *is* the simplest (structured) language that can be natively compiled? i mean, ...

what *is* the simplest (structured) language that can be natively compiled? i mean, Forth is definitely a candidate - it can be incrementally compiled, and it's hard to get much simpler than colorForth, or even its ASCII equivalent. but Forth is only really a good fir for machines where addresses and data are the same width, as anyone who's had to deal with segmented DOS Forths can attest.

but what's next up the ladder? i guess BCPL has the same strength / weakness as Forth, that it expects everything to be the same width... with the added requirement of word addressing. (when BCPL was developed, that was unexceptional... it no longer is.)

but what about architectures where addresses and data are of naturally different widths? does that require us to actually implement data typing, in order to distinguish pointers from things pointed to? how about the situation where addresses aren't linear - or worst, each address space has its own size of address? what of alignment requirements?
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