[virtmach] Is this thing still on?

[btanksley@hifn.com]

From: Denis N. Antonioli [mailto:antonio@ifi.unizh.ch]
>On Mon, 26 Jun 2000 btanksley@hifn.com wrote:

>> Both Forth and Oberon are systems which are written to be 
>> compiled almost
>> entirely to their own virtual machines.

>I have to disagree here.

>I've studied CS at the ETHZ, at the time they introduced Oberon for the
>students' exercises and have taken a few courses given by Wirth on the
>design of the system: Oberon was written to compile directly to native
>code.

An interesting distinction.  No doubt Oberon was _designed_ to compile to
native code.  But the fact remains that several Oberon systems are written
for its own virtual machine, and compile to it.

>Or are you thinking of Franz's OMI (or SlimBianries)? But he stores
>more or less the AST produced by the compiler. I don't think that
>pass as a virtual machine, does it?

Now this is a very good question; I would agree that SlimBinaries are not a
virtual machine, but I postulate that they _require_ a virtual machine in
order to run.  If there were no VM in Oberon, then SlimBinaries would not be
portable.

The problem is that the VM isn't well-specified, not that it doesn't exist.

>	dna

-Billy