[A86] Re: What about LISP?
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[A86] Re: What about LISP?
On Tue, Dec 18, 2001 at 12:17:53AM +0000, David West wrote:
> I've been thinking on and off lately about the descussions that took
> place a couple of months ago regaurding a new z80 language compiler.
> ...
>
> Ex:
>
> (define Put-Sprite (lambda (x y)
> (Z80-Asm '("LD A, X"
> "XOR B"
> .... ))))
>
> It just might be the glue we've been looking for.
You do know that's Scheme syntax, not LISP, right? I've been thinking
about Scheme on the TI-86 for a few months also. On my list of projects
I'd like to work on is a Scheme compiler in Z80 asm, and below that is a
Scheme compiler whose target is Z80 asm. Of course, that doesn't mean
I'll get to work on it any time soon, but I'd like to hear about
anything others are doing.
Personally, I think Scheme on a calculator would be interesting from an
implementation point of view, but I really doubt that much practical
good will come from it. Certainly, an interperter would be much too slow
to write useful programs in. A compiler might be slightly more useful,
but making it generate good code would be even harder than making the
current C compilers generate good code. You'd also have to write a
pretty big library in assembly to make certain operations fast
(putsprite, for example). And then there's the necessary garbage
collection, which would slow things down even more.
The one big advantage of Scheme would be on-calculator development,
because it's so easy to type and parse. But that would restrict you to
an interpreted environment, which would probably be too slow for
anything useful. Still, it's better than basic, and it might be fun to
work on.
--David
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