C-- (was Re: BEAM documentation)

[Michael Hobbs]

James Hague said:
> Luke Gorrie wrote:
>>
>> Have you considered using existing mid-level languages instead? If so,
>> are there any that seem particularly qualified/disqualified?
>
> An interesting option is C-- (see cminusminus.org).

I've always thought that Microsoft should have used something like C-- for
.Net, instead of bytecode. Considering that .Net bytecode is compiled to
machine code as it is executed, there's not much difference between the
{.Net language} -> {.Net bytecode} -> {machine code} system of .Net and
the {language} -> {C code} -> {machine code} system of compile-to-C
languages like Scheme or Eiffel. Plus, machine-generated C-- code would be
just as obfuscated  as disassembled machine code or bytecode, so there are
really no issues with revealing too much about the original source code.

Just an aside,
- Michael Hobbs