Jai compiles 80,000 lines of code in under a second

[FromAnotherPlanet]

On Friday, 21 September 2018 at 06:34:47 UTC, Vladimir Panteleev 
wrote:
> On Friday, 21 September 2018 at 06:30:40 UTC, Walter Bright 
> wrote:
>> On 9/20/2018 10:11 PM, mate wrote:
>>> Note that the build can be done at compile time because the 
>>> metaprogramming capabilities of the language are not limited 
>>> in terms of system calls.
>>
>> Back in the naive olden days, Microsoft released ActiveX, 
>> where a web page could load executable objects (!) from the 
>> internet and run them in the browser.
>>
>> It quickly became apparent that this was a disaster, as lots 
>> of people on the internet aren't to be trusted.
>>
>> CTFE on D doesn't allow making any system calls. This is on 
>> purpose.
>
> The usual argument against this is that source code 
> distributions already usually include some sort of build or 
> installation script (be it in the form of "configure", or a 
> makefile, or a Visual Studio project), which can already 
> execute arbitrary commands.
>
> The problem with putting it in the compiler is that it 
> invalidates many contracts (and, thus, use cases) about what 
> invoking the compiler can do. This means you can't bisect or 
> reduce (as with Dustmite) the source code reliably. 
> Reproducible builds are out too, as the produced object file is 
> no longer purely a function of the source code and compiler 
> version.

The counter argument is that the compiler is generally not a 
vector for a computer virus. If I notice I have malware on my 
computer, I'll think of the websites and the installer scripts 
I've run recently. I would never expect that some arbitrary code 
I included in a project would have created a virus and installed 
it while the compiler built. Sounds like a potential disaster to 
me.

I frequently copy and paste code I don't yet understand all of 
the time in hopes of understanding it by running it through a 
compiler. I will personally not ever use Jai.