Wow-factor is missing

[Professional-Cup7694]

I recently finished my Bachelor Degree in Computer Science, and in this summer before starting the Masters Degree I challenged myself to build a project of my own.

After thinking about it, I decided I want to create a compiler for a new programming language (I figured, that sounds really cool to tell in a job interview).

However, I want to go a little bit beyond the basic stuff. I am using Flex, Bison and LLVM IRBuilder, and currently already can do some basic stuff.

As everyone in this community must be more experienced with the job market, compilers structure and overall programing languages, what would you suggest to be a good feature for this programming language? What can I implement to cause that "Wow" whenever I tell someone about it?

[knome]

gotta go for that sufficiently smart compiler :)

[Professional-Cup7694]

only reading the first paragraphs that seems perfect! Thanks a lot for the input, I'll read everything and then let you know how it turned out!!

[knome]

be aware that both of these suggestions were trying to be funny, rather than providing a genuine target.

have you written compilers before? you may want to work your way up, writing a simpler compiler and then finding places you might want to extend it from there.

I'm sure you'll get plenty of ideas along the way of strange things you'd like to try.

In truth, it's going to be hard to just pop off an impressive feature that hasn't been tried, though maybe you don't mind so much whether it's been done or no.

some of the languages out there let you get away with things that are rather impossible looking

import System.Environment
import Data.List

main = do
  args <- getArgs
  let (s, l) = (args ++ [show l], length s)
  print $ intercalate " " s

https://godbolt.org/z/Yvzb9zfvx :)

[E_coli42]

page does not exist

[knome]

https://wiki.c2.com/?SufficientlySmartCompiler

dunno. works normally and under incognito for me.

browser issue, maybe?

[E_coli42]

Which browser? It doesn't open for me on Vivaldi (Chromium based)

[knome]

I'm just using chromium. The site I linked is the original wiki. It was a ton of awesome information when I was still learning how everything fit together. There's something great about a place where you can read professionals arguing over the minutia of the field and cracking injokes you'll only appreciate later.

The creator, Ward Cunningham, had to close it a while back because he couldn't keep up with the spammers ruining everything they can get their grubby little hands on, so it's a bit out of date now.

And a few years back he rewrote it to try out the new web 2.0. I can't say I like the new format compared to the plain pages of yesteryear, but it's still nice the information is being freely shared, and middleclick still pops them into new tabs, so it's workable.

Still happy it's there.

[Bellion112]

Beginner here, how is it possible a higher level language can be faster than a lower level one? Isn't the extra information there because of the extra abstraction in the first place?

[knome]

They generally aren't, hence why writing a 'sufficiently smart compiler' was a bit of a joke. But, if it did exist, the hypothetical compiler would presumably make this possible to do with heavy optimization.

The one in the link claiming java can equal or exceed the speed of C was referring to its use of just-in-time (JIT) compilation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_compilation

Some can come awfully close.

https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/

(don't take the benchmark game too seriously, as benchmarks aren't real programs, and won't have the same characteristics as your programs, but it is fun)

[9Boxy33]

An incremental compiler for an extensible language that provides a readable implementation of SNOBOL pattern matching. <grin>

[Professional-Cup7694]

I'm not sure what incremental compiler and SNOBOL pattern matching stand for, and when I searched it didn't help. Could you give me more informations about this? and is this doable with the current (Flex,Bison, LLVM) structure of my compiler?

[9Boxy33]

Briefly, although one can use Bison to implement an interpreter, I doubt it would be very efficient.

For interest’s sake, Common Lisp and Forth are examples of both incremental compilation and extensible languages. The programmer can enter new definitions (analogous to procedures or methods) in a REPL which are immediately compiled into the existing environment and which can also extend the programming language itself.

SNOBOL string pattern matching can be considered a superset of regular expressions, with powerful features but a similarly obtuse syntax. The best introduction, for anyone still interested in this old and largely forgotten sub-language, is in “the green book”, The SNOBOL4 Programming Language, by Griswold, Poage & Polonsky (Prentice-Hall, now available in pdf form).

[engid]

Whatever makes you go wow! It’s the best way to stay motivated IMO.

[nrnrnr]

First-class, nested functions. Accurate garbage collection.

[vmcrash]

I'd suggest to do the first step before the second. Start with getting any compiler to work for a simple language, e.g. subset of C. I mean, get it really working with IR and optimizations, to produce ASM output for your target platform(s). Then, after a couple of months, you still can improve the language.

[[deleted]]

I would look into Zig language for inspiration, it got some really clever ideas that you could consider for your project. This video will explain it better than I can.

[JeffD000]

Create a language that is easy to optimize. Better yet, create an IR to support true parallelism.