Tuesday, July 20, 2010

This is getting silly


Guess what's a goal for C# 5.0?

Tadaaaaaaaaaaaaaa....

Compiler as a service. Which is code for eval. Anders Hejlsberg shows it off in the great The Future of C# at 59:30.

Unbeknownst until just now to your correspondent, the JVM actually has a similar facility, but as Earl says, it's over-engineered to the brink of spontaneous self-combustion. (Love that quote.)

(I don't want to diss Java and the JVM too much, btw. I think it's a great platform for when you need to get something done. It's just not inspiring.)

CaaS is great on so many levels! Lispers will be able to claim another first on a vital technology. No future languages will be REPL-less.

My prediction for C# 6.0: Hygienic macros, quasisyntax, and phase separation. Seriously.

1 comment:

[ICR] said...

eh, a compiler does more than just eval. I'm kinda hoping more of the compiler will be opened up than just "evaluate this pls"