The Perl Foundation took part in Google's Summer of Code program and managed to get 8 projects funded. This is the eighth in a series of informal interviews finding out more information about these projects. Up now is Curtis Hall with "Refactor Pirate so that the intermediate code emitter is independent of the Python parse tree (AST)".
Hi there! Tell us a bit about yourself, including age, where you
are a student and what you are studying
I'm 23, a senior at the University of Arizona in Tucson and
working towards
degrees in Computer Science and Anatomy and Physiology. I'm minoring in
Italian
and Psychology. I was born on a military base in Vicenza, Italy where my dad
was stationed.
You've had a Google Summer of Code project funded. What will you be
doing? How will you be doing this? What's the final product?
I will be refactoring Pirate so that it
becomes more of a generic compiler system. The goal is to separate the parser
from the IMC emitter so that it can become somewhat of a template compiler for
other scripting languages that want to be ported to Parrot. Upon
completion of
this, I plan on implementing new language constructs that Pirate lacks.
How did you get interested in this topic?
The Virtual Machine Parrot has interested me since first hearing
about it,
and the idea of compiling and running several languages on one virtual machine
spun me in the direction of Pirate.
Where do you see your project going after this summer?
Upon completion of this project, I would like to begin porting the Icon
programming language to Parrot, using the generalized routines I've
implemented
and creating new ones that are specific to Icon.
Is there any way to track your progress over the next few months?
Got a blog?
With this type of Project, a very large portion of time will be
devoted to
theory and understanding of the code that is already in place and in
use. It is
important to understand the functionality of everything as it is working now,
and work towards improving that functionality before actually modifying or
adding any code. As of now no code has been modified, but all that is will be
documented and tracked over the next few months.
Did you expect to get funded?
No, I underestimated the importance of this project to computer science
world, and therefore thought that it would be over looked.
Got a silly fact about yourself or the project?
I'm actually still a CS minor trying to fulfill the CS major requirements
:-)
