alt Hacker NewsRe "c)": No, self-hosting is the biggest temptation, and the worst mistake, for any programming language. It's death to bootstrapping. However, if you do succumb to the temptation to self-host, having a C backend, as Copper does, is probably the best way to handle it.
Replies
What's the problem with self-hosting? I do imagine it's easier to write a compiler in something like Haskell.
Self-hosting is a trivial matter if you can roughly map a subset of features of an existing language to your language. Write bootstrap compiler in that language and translator in parallel (as long as you have good AST/LST), run conformance tests on both.
As long as one of the backends is something widely available, I don't see a problem. C is a decent option. LLVM IR is another.
Why is it harder to bootstrap a self-hosted language than it is to bootstrap a language implemented in C, which itself must be bootstrapped?
Bootstrapping is a one-time cost, but implementing the toolchain in C is a cost everyone has to pay every single time they touch the toolchain source.
I've never really understood the opposition to self-hosting.
As long as:
* Your language is the kind of language that suits compiler development.
and
* You support compiling to C or something so that bootstrapping doesn't involve an opaque binary or compiling 30 different git commits in a row.
What are the downsides exactly?