SydML

Who to imitate?

Currently, I believe an S-expression–based syntax is the best choice for the following reasons:

1. Ease of parsing. I don't want to waste my time writing and maintaining a complex parser for a volatile grammar.

2. Ease of printing. I already had plans to use S-expressions as a textual representation of ILs. Free or low-cost parsing and printing of ILs is a luxury notably offered by GNU Guile. Like the respectable Scheme hackers the Guile developers are, each IL used is easy to interact with, inspect, evaluate, transform, etc. Obviously, such features would be of invaluable aid in debugging, communicating, and testing.

3. The most important point of all, is that I do not give a fuck, and I cannot continue to allow myself to give a fuck. This is a toy compiler! I am not a victim of backwards compatibility requirements! If I so choose, I can tear everything down to start anew on a dime. Fuck syntax, and fuck parsing! They are completely irrelevant to this project's goals. This is an important revelation for me; I made this mistake last year, and I do not wish to make it again. Let's get to programming, already.