[Mono-list] Mixing languages within

[Kelly Leahy]

> The problem is cross references -- that is if part
> in language A needs
> part in language B and vice versa. Then the
> compilers need to agree
> much more -- upon some internal APIs, which seems
> quite difficult in
> general.

I understand that in general, it would certainly be
possible to build a set of compilers that are aware of
each other to the extent that they support nested
code.  However, this was the problem I was most
concerned with when discussing such a design, and
again - I don't believe this should or ever could be
done with the .NET platform and C#, without a huge
effort by MS to make such a thing possible, or a very
non-standard implementation of the compilers.  In any
case, even if we could build such a thing, why would
we?  Unless MS is going to do the same, or we have
plans to eclipse MS in the .NET compiler business
(very silly thought indeed for mainstream langauges
like C# and VB.NET) we should not expect such support
to be useful in "real-world" applications.  

After all, at the end of the day, our goal is to build
a platform that allows for cross-platform
compatibility with MS's .NET implementation, right? 
Perhaps this means they have features we don't
(Win-specific features that cannot be implemented on
other platforms) and perhaps this means we have
features they don't, but I don't think we should make
the source files incompatible.  Here, I think features
== run-time library stuff, not features == language
functionality.

If we start going a completely different direction
with the language altogether, we suddenly become as
obscure as MS would probably like to think we are.

Kelly