The Dolorem Pattern: Growing a Language Through Compile-Time Function Execution (Pearl/Brave New Idea)

Abstract

Programming languages are often designed as static, monolithic units. As a result, they are inflexible. We show a new mechanism of programming language design that allows to more flexible languages: by using compile-time function execution and metaprogramming, we implement a language mostly in itself. Our approach is usable for creating feature-rich, yet low-overhead system programming languages. We illustrate it on two systems, one that lowers to C and one that lowers to LLVM