Re: ISO: The Eiffel OO programming language and IDE, on VMS

Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-earth.ufp> wrote:

On 2025-03-27, Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:

>
or:
- people use a different backend than LLVM (GCC, custom, whatever)
>

 
If anyone knows of a serious backend code generator other than LLVM
or GCC, please feel free to point me at it. :-)
 
Simon.
 
PS: And no Bill, the Amsterdam Compiler Kit does not apply. :-)

Depends what you consider serious (and what "backend" means).
There is bunch of compilers that use their own backend,
for example optimized Ocaml or SBCL Lisp.  If you aim at
highest possible speed, regardless of language, then they
can not compete.  If you look at native performance for
relevant languages, then they are top performers (there are
Lisp compilers which generate code via translation to C,
resulting speed is lower than obtained using SBCL).

Note that context was porting languages, "classic"
languages are covered by VSI, so relevant things are
backends for more exotic languages.  There was recent
trend to adopt LLVM in such cases, and Julia seem to
be prominent example of language dependent on LLVM.
But more popular approach seem to be via custom
backend or via C.  For example Haskell folks some time
ago said that LLVM does not really give them advantages
compared to going via C, and C way is easier.

--
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