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I'm writing a simple functional language with automatic memory management. Go's simplicity seems it could be a good target for transpilation: garbage collection, decent concurrency paradigm, generally simple/flexible, errors as values. I already know Go quite well, but I have no idea about IR formats (LLVM, etc)

To be clear, using Go as a compiler backend would be a hidden implementation detail and there would be no user-level interop features. I'd like to bundle the Go compiler in my own compiler to save end-user headaches, but not sure how feasible this is. Once my language is stable enough for self-hosting, I'd roll my own backend (likely using Cranelift)

Pros

  • Can focus on my language, and defer learning about compiler backends
  • In particular, I wouldn't have to figure out automatic memory management
  • Could easily wrap Go's decent standard library, saving me from a lot of implementation grunt work
  • Would likely borrow a lot of the concurrency paradigm for my own language
  • Go's compiler is pretty speedy

Cons

  • Seems like an unconventional approach
  • Perception issues (thinking of Elm and it's kernel code controversy)
  • Reduce runtime performance tuneability (not to concerned about this TBH)
  • Runtime panics would leak the Go backend
  • Potential headaches from bundling the Go compiler (both technical and legal)
  • Not idea how tricky it would be to re-implement the concurreny stuff in my own backend

So, am I crazy for considering Go as compiler backend while I get my language off the ground?

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[-] Shareni@programming.dev 1 points 8 months ago

Seems like an unconventional approach

HCL for example is written in go.

It's a DSL to configure Terraform, which is also written in go.

this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2024
13 points (93.3% liked)

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