🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sat, 02 Jun 2018 16:07:09 -0400, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:

> On Sat, 2 Jun 2018 12:23:56 +0100, Gareth's Downstairs Computer wrote:
>>
>> On 02/06/2018 03:44, John Levine wrote:
>>> In article <cb11f87e-44a9-4f0b...@googlegroups.com>,
>>> Quadibloc  <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>>>
>>> Dartmouth's compiler was quite impressive, typically compiling an
>>> entire program in one or two clock ticks.  It was so fast that nobody
>>> bothered to save object code.
>>
>> Interesting, does that also indicate interactive development where the
>> compilation speed would be largely unapparent?
> 
> I guess I am missing a link here. Why did none of the BASICs coming with
> the 8bit micros need a compiler and rather interpret the code instead?

Several reasons, but space was one issue. If you compiled into a custom 
interpretive code, you could optimise the design of that code to be very 
compact. This saved precious memory space. One of my colleagues produced 
a BASIC system that didn't store the source code at all, but rather 
stored a bit more with the interpretive code - he could then regenerate 
the source code if the user wanted to list it or save it.

There was also the overhead of linkers, loaders etc. all of which were 
not needed if interpreted. For most purposes, speed wasn't an issue.



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