flpc VS maru

> I've actually never considered putting the comment first! I'll have to think about that one.

I'm sure there are many competing constraints so definitely don't do it because I'm suggesting this on a whim. :) My reasoning is that as a human reader, the comment is the more readable part, so I'd want to see it first. And for a computer, it probably doesn't care if the op code appears first or not.

> You probably don't want to understand Haskell's loop fusion by comparing source and generated code.

Indeed. But even though C and Haskell are very different, I think they share a common philosophy about compilation where you can basically do whatever you want as long as it still produces the same result.

I vaguely remember looking at Python generate bytecode (with `dis.dis`) and seeing it wasn't too bad. I haven't tried it on a larger program though.

There's tcc (and more recently chibicc that I haven't had a chance to check out yet) that you're probably already aware of. Is the generated output still pretty bad.

I'll also throw my own attempt in the ring

- High level https://github.com/asrp/flpc/blob/master/lib/stage0.flpc

Well Forth is possibly the most minimal VM over a platform, as evidenced by openfirmware.

It does have problems scaling though, in that if you've seen one Forth, you've seen one Forth ie. The variations required to fit a platform make them semi-incompatible.

That's not to say that a more lispy Forth wouldn't be useful though, in that a concatenative syntax allows us to pass custom datastructures around like APL, and CPS (delimited continuations with lexically scoped dynamic binding would come from the lisp side (see https://github.com/manuel/wat-js).

Memory management in Forth can handle multiple memory types eg. https://flashforth.com/ so adding something like ref counting (https://github.com/zigalenarcic/minilisp/blob/main/main.c) to handle the dynamic list side of things might mesh well.

In any case, if you're looking for a self hosting lisp that runs on bare metal, https://github.com/attila-lendvai/maru has been out for a few years.

Take a look at Maru. The github project has links to other similar projects.

That's the idea behind the Maru Project. It's a really cool concept and more people should know about it.

Here's another interesting one I just noticed:

https://github.com/attila-lendvai/maru/blob/maru.10/source/a...