Re:Beej's Guide to C Programming (2007)
by fasquoika on Friday September 08, 2017 @04:10PM
(#15203526)
> Even today, if you were to create a brand new language, you'd likely write the compiler in C (or maybe C++).
You might write the bootstrapping compiler in C for portability reasons, but you'd probably write the real compiler in the new language itself. Not to mention that if you don't mind the extra dependency on POSIX platforms you don't even need to write the bootstrapping one in C. For example, the Rust compiler frontend was originally written in OCaml, and is now written in Rust with a fairly complicated bootstrapping process. The backend is still C because it uses LLVM, but it hardly has to be
You might write the bootstrapping compiler in C for portability reasons, but you'd probably write the real compiler in the new language itself. Not to mention that if you don't mind the extra dependency on POSIX platforms you don't even need to write the bootstrapping one in C. For example, the Rust compiler frontend was originally written in OCaml, and is now written in Rust with a fairly complicated bootstrapping process. The backend is still C because it uses LLVM, but it hardly has to be