Re: relations aren't types?

Marshall Spight <mspight_at_dnai.com> schrieb:
> In designing the ideal low-level systems language, one would end up
> with a language that could be entirely written in terms of itself and
> still maintain maximum efficiency. In designing the ideal high-level
> applications language, one would *not* expect it could be written in
> terms of itself. At least some core would have to be written in a
> systems language. But I would still expect it to be possible for the
> code written in that application language to be efficient. (Probably
> some modest efficiency goals are neccesary for success.)

Ultimately no language is written in terms of itself, but in terms of whatever language the processor supports natively.

BUT. Glasgow Haskell and Stalin Scheme are both 100% self-hosting and also generate the best-optomized compiled code for their respective languages. I think OCaml and probably some other MLs are mostly self-hosting.

Since the original question was whether it's feasible to efficiently implement a database in a language which is high-level enough to serve as the database's scripting language as well -- I think the answer is yes. These languages are obviously good at writing compilers, and I propose that writing an efficient database similarly is more dependent on complicated high-level logical optomizations than low-level hacks. Received on Mon Jan 12 2004 - 23:04:04 CET