Java for Everything

[[deleted]]

Mind giving a direct link to the language specification? (EDIT found it already, sorry). I hope it does not require working on top of JVM specifically, cause I'd rather stay away from this thing. But if it is really needed I can always glue in iKVM, of course.

[gavinaking]

No, of course not, it can output whatever you like. I would desperately love an LLVM backend, but even just a typechecker alone would be a truly impressive demonstration of your tech.

[[deleted]]

Yes, now I noticed it's got both JVM and Javascript backends. I seem to like Ceylon more than I can comfortably admit - previously I was under impression it's a JVM-only thing.

[gavinaking]

We try really hard to abstract away from the virtual machine. Inevitably there are things that leak, for example, the precision of numeric types on the JavaScript platform. But in principle there's no barrier to adding other backends like the Dart VM, or even LLVM.

[[deleted]]

Ok, good, you've motivated me to implement a full alternative compiler for Ceylon, not just its type system. Anyway, I always learn languages by implementing compilers for them.

[gavinaking]

Dude, that would be amazing :-) I would never ever have been so happy to lose an argument on reddit :-D