Parrot and GCC (Was: Re: Perl, Python and noo perl SEC: UNCLASSIFIED)

[Matthew Hawkins]

On Fri, 05 Apr 2002, Jeremy wrote:
> I take it you mean why isn't it a front-end to the gcc compiler?

Bingo!

> Some of the tricks that perl does can only be done with some kind of
> virtual machine backend.

Just to prove my cluelessness about this, so how does gcj work then?
Surely Java requires a virtual machine also?  Hence, something similar
could be done for Parrot if it was truly necessary.

> The other reason is that the parrot team want to be able to have 
> frontends for Python, Java and C#.

GCC has the goal of supporting multiple languages also.  So why not join
forces and create the one development suite that can deal with anyone's
language of choice?

> There is an archive of relevent discussions at perl.org where the
> design team defend things like their choice of VM, etc.

I think that's more to do with the choice of moving to Parrot in perl6
over not doing it at all, and plugging along with the current system.
I had a good read over there not that long ago as I find the whole
history of parrot quite amusing.  Some people just can't take a joke,
others pick it up and carry it to the extreme ;)

-- 
Matt