Development Status and History
XL is the result of a long language design work that began around 1992. The language was designed and implemented primarily by Christophe de Dinechin.
Historically, the XL compiler was written in C++. It had achieved a point where most of the features described above worked correctly, but writing plug-ins was a nightmare, because C++ itself is not extensible, so implementing translate-like statements was impossible. The parse tree was more complicated, with dozens of node types, because it was designed for cross-language support. Moka was a Java-to-Java extensible compiler using the same infrastructure.
Abandoning the cross-language objectives and complex parse-tree structure, a complete rewrite of the compiler was started in 2003. The parse tree was vastly simplified down to the 7 XL0 nodes types now in use. This new compiler bootstrapped in 2004, and all new development is now written in XL. However, this new compiler still has somewhat incomplete XL1 support, although its abilities already exceed C++ in a few areas.
Read more about this topic: XL (programming Language)
Famous quotes containing the words development, status and/or history:
“Dissonance between family and school, therefore, is not only inevitable in a changing society; it also helps to make children more malleable and responsive to a changing world. By the same token, one could say that absolute homogeneity between family and school would reflect a static, authoritarian society and discourage creative, adaptive development in children.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)
“As a work of art it has the same status as a long conversation between two not very bright drunks.”
—Clive James (b. 1939)
“... the history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)