Re: Command Languages Versus Programming Languages

On Sun, 13 Oct 2024 13:43:54 -0000 (UTC)
cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) boring babbled:

In article <vefvo0$k1mm$1@dont-email.me>,  <Muttley@DastartdlyHQ.org> wrote:

On Sat, 12 Oct 2024 16:36:26 -0000 (UTC)
It can mean either. Essentially its a binary that contains directly runnable
CPU machine code. I'm not sure why you're having such a conceptual struggle
understanding this simple concept.

>
Oh, I understand what you mean; it's your choice of non-standard
terminology that I object to.  Admittedly, Microsoft uses the

So what is standard terminology then?

Or consider x86; most modern x86 processors are really dataflow
CPUs, and the x86 instruction encoding is just a bytecode that
is, in fact, interpreted by the real CPU under the hood.  So
where does that fit on your little shrink-to-fit taxonomy?  What

What happens inside the CPU is irrelevant. Its a black box as far as the
rest of the machine is concerned. As I said in another post, it could be
pixies with abacuses, doesn't matter.

[lots of waffle snipped]

I could bore you with the number I've actually "dealt with" including
military hardware but whats the point.

>
Weird appeals to experience, with vague and unsupported claims,
aren't terribly convincing.

So its ok for you to do that but nobody else?

You've probably programmed the
occasional PIC or arduino and think you're an expert.

>
Ok, Internet Guy.

I'll take that as a yes. Btw, you're some random guy on the internet too
claiming some kind of higher experience.

I disagree. Modern linux reminds me a lot of SunOS and HP-UX from back in
the day.

>
Then I can only guess that you never used either SunOS or HP-UX.

"I disagree with you so you must be lying". Whatever.

Anybody serious presumably meaning you.

>
Sorry, you've shown no evidence why I should believe your
assertions, and you've ignored directly disconfirming evidence

Likewise.

Really? So java bytecode will run direct on x86 or ARM will it? Please give
some links to this astounding discovery you've made.

>
Um, ok. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazelle

So its incomplete and has to revert to software for some opcodes. Great.
FWIW Sun also had a java processor but you still can't run bytecode on
normal hardware without a JVM.

So in your mind google translate is a "compiler" for spoken languages is it?

>
To quote you above, "now you're just being silly."

Why, whats the difference? Your definition seems to be any program that can
translate from one language to another.

No, it was a pre-compiler. Just like Oracles PRO*C/C++.

>
Nope.

Yes, they're entirely analoguous.

https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/appdev.112/e10825/pc_02prc.htm

I know the important ones. You've dug out some obscure names from google
that probably only a few CS courses even mention never mind study the work of.

>
>
Ok, so you aren't familiar with the current state of the field
as far as systems go; fair enough.

Who cares about the current state? Has nothing to do with this discussion.

Aho, Sethi, and Ullman: "Simply stated, a compiler is a program
that reads a program written in one language -- the _source_
language -- and translates it into an equivalent program in
another language -- the _target_ language."

Thats an opinion, not a fact.

So it would seem that your definition is not shared by those who
quite literally wrote the book on compilers.

Writing the book is not the same as writing the compilers.

Look, I get the desire to want to pin things down into neat
little categorical buckets, and if in one's own experience a
"compiler" has only ever meant GCC or perhaps clang (or maybe
Microsoft's compiler), then I can get where one is coming from.

You can add a couple of TI and MPLAB compilers into that list. And obviously
Arduinos , whatever its called. Been a while.

But as usual, in its full generality, the world is just messier
than whatever conceptual boxes you've built up here.

There's a difference between accepting there are shades of grey and asserting
that a compiler is pretty much any program which translates from one thing to
another.