For big projects, especially open source ones, modularity isn't just good engineering practice. It significantly increases the chance of success of a project, because even if the overall project isn't popular subcomponents can be.
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Rails, split out of Basecamp, is an important example. Or ICU, split out of Taligent of all things!
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In my case, the biggest success of the Pathfinder project so far hasn't been Pathfinder itself but rather font-kit. I could have easily made it tightly coupled to PF, but then it would have far fewer users right now, because Pathfinder isn't yet done.
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Another example: Itanium may be dead and buried, but thanks to modularity it's also the reason you can throw exceptions in C++ and catch panics in Rust, because the Itanium C++ ABI became the de facto standard for open source compilers.
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Replying to @pcwalton
would the Itanium stakeholders consider this a "success"? :)
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Replying to @whitequark
Probably not, but it's more of a success than all of the compiler work going to waste!
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Replying to @pcwalton
it boggles my mind that LLVM still has an Itanium backend but (soft-)rejected an M68K one
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Replying to @pcwalton
I think adding a 8051 (or a 6502) backend would be a mistake, actually. you'll be working against LLVM the whole time and the generated code would be still crap no matter how much effort you sink into it
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Replying to @whitequark @pcwalton
most 8051 C code isn't even real C! the default C mode in sdcc is to make functions non-reentrant
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I assume you’ve played with cc65 at some point… It’s impressive how it actually compiles real C, and hilarious how unidiomatic your C has to be to get it to generate anything reasonable (use chars instead of ints, avoid mul/div, use static variables everywhere, etc.)
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Replying to @pcwalton
I've never used 6502 because I'm not nostalgic for a 6502 system I never had as a child and there are few other reasons to do it
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Replying to @whitequark @pcwalton
meh. there are some decent modern static 6502 cores. clock them down to 1Hz if need be. decent code density if that's important. you don't have to be nostalgic to appreciate it.
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