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- URL: https://x.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/1957943819623629060
- Author: Jonathan Blow (@Jonathan_Blow)
- Posted: 2025-08-19 23:12:38
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1/ @Jonathan_Blow
My conclusion in college was that this was all a weird farce to satisfy certain academics, because what you end up doing here is writing a program that is the compiler, except in a fake low-powered programming language that doesn’t even run. You might as well use a more readable, more powerful programming language.
2/ @Jonathan_Blow
(The fact that it doesn’t even run is a feature, because that way you don’t have to notice when it’s broken. If you had to notice when it’s broken, you would have to be a good programmer to write the language spec, but these are designed to be written by people who can’t program.)
3/ @TankorSmash
@Jonathan_Blow @pikuma
I guess they could say “why use a programming language to represent this, if the idea can be cleanly expressed in a page or two of notation. You might as well be exact with your formulas, so that people who can read it understand exactly what to do”
4/ @Jonathan_Blow
@TankorSmash @pikuma
That is not how it works though. The reason you need a big complicated program to implement a compiler is because what needs to be done is big and complicated.