[M3devel] Just putting it out there...

[m3 at sol42.com]

On 20 Jul 2010, at 15:36, Mark Wickens wrote:
> Yes, after I'd written the email and thought about it I realised it was
> a pretty stupid idea.

Well, not stupid at all.

Java may suck but the JVM certainly does not.  There is a lot of interest now in compiling languages other than Java on the JVM, which has turned out to be a sort of universal runtime.  Only that it was designed with Java in mind, and you would end up with something *like* Modula-3, not Modula-3 itself: what you can do in JVM "assembly" is limited, no PACKED types, no BITS x FOR y .. z, LOOPHOLE may or may not be always possible, UNTRACED would be problematic, pointer arithmetic in UNSAFE modules might require JNI and who knows what else, forget about <*EXTERNAL*> C calls, full interoperability with Java would require supporting Java interfaces (at the language level I think)... and these are just the few I can think of right now.

On the other hand I would really like to code in this superset-of-a-subset of Modula-3 and run it on a JVM.

Regarding the Critical Mass JVM described in Threads 3, are the sources available?

Regards.
-Daniel