HLL and its semantics

Andrew Bromage bromage@cs.mu.OZ.AU
Mon, 3 Jul 1995 10:28:19 +1000 (EST)


G'day.

> here are a few points I'd like to make :
> 
> I don't think we need to specify a standard LLL for TUNES.

In the short term, I agree with you.  As a long-term goal, however, I
disagree.  The issue here is not platform independence, but source
language independence.  I don't think that we're so blinkered as to
believe that our HLL will be the only language used under Tunes.  Some
problems are better expressed in functional languages, some in object 
oriented languages, some in logic languages etc.  We should not oblige 
the programmer to use one and only one language to develop applications.
We should also design with evolution in mind: We don't know what future
programming languages will look like, but Tunes should work with them
anyway (though maybe not as efficiently as one would wish).

Disclaimer: This is a _very_ long-term goal.  We should obviously stick
with one HLL for the purposes of developing the OS itself!

Cheers,
Andrew Bromage