Machine-independent intermediate languages

[Norman Diamond]

In article <831 at etive.ed.ac.uk>, db at lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Dave Berry (LFCS)) writes:

(About C and Lisp...)
> As an aside, I've heard both disparagingly described as "portable assemblers"
> (and I've heard their proponents take that as a compliment).

Both languages' inventors created them expressly to be assemblers with
a portable syntax.  The description is not disparaging at all.  Only
certain critics who intend the description to be disparaging in fact
reveal their gross ignorance.

The phrase "portable assembler" is unfortunately ambiguous.  This has
led users to expect C PROGRAMS to be as portable as the language's
SYNTAX.  Since their demands have been listened to, C is losing its
original capabilities.  Anyone who wants to write portable PROGRAMS
should use another language.  Lisp pretty well fits the bill of
machine-independence, despite its original purpose of assisting the
coding of machine-language (not assembler-language) programs.
-- 
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