GoKawiilPages for posting about my work until I decide to tackle websites.
2/14/26
Early GDSL
Seeds 3/14/26
Compilers are enormous these days, millions of lines spanning frontend to backend to turn text to process on a system. Any small compiler gets small by making tradeoffs, it constrains itself to a shape small enough that it fits, or simply doesn’t implement the features.
That’s what I would’ve believed before I wrote a subset of C in 1500 lines, with the only feature compromises being ‘I haven’t built that part yet but I could’. Then, on the same kernel with zero modification, wrote a Lisp compiler in 500 lines. They’re fast enough to be useful, they aren’t fragile stacks of tightly optimized assumptions ready to collapse at a breath. They’re just 3 weeks of work reconstructing what a language can mean. Which made me ask: what are these other compilers doing that add the million lines?
And this is the answer I’ve landed on so far.
Seams
Landscapes
Kludges
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