Machine-independent intermediate languages

[Eric S. Raymond]

In <912 at sword.bellcore.com>, yba at sabre.bellcore.com (Mark Levine) writes:
>      [...] the target for the compiler is C.  Given that most new machines
> these days get C as part of the initial language suite, even though it is
> not all things to all of us, perhaps (I was wrong and) we already have a
> _de facto_ MIIL.                    [...]                Perhaps the better
> topic is how much it costs to do better than C, rather than whether one can.

Precisely the point I have been trying to make.

And, on a related topic:

Peter ("Have you hugged your wolf today?") deSilva seems to think the point
of a uMIIL is to provide a medium for selling software, a way for it to be
distributed in machine-independent form that nosy hackers can't read and
modify.

Excuse me, but I thought the security problem in for-sale software was to guard
it from unauthorized *copying* and *use*, not unauthorized *understanding*! A
uMIIL does nothing for the real problem, since by definition it has to be easy
to copy and run on lots of machines.
-- 
      Eric S. Raymond                     (the mad mastermind of TMN-Netnews)
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