

EaRing: A Meta-Literal Machine (high-level dynamic assembler) by Zed Shaw - rincewind
http://www.scribd.com/vacuum?url=http://www.zedshaw.com/repository/rubyenrails2008/build/rubyenrails_2008.pdf

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jcl
Obligatory non-Scribd link:

[http://www.zedshaw.com/repository/rubyenrails2008/build/ruby...](http://www.zedshaw.com/repository/rubyenrails2008/build/rubyenrails_2008.pdf)

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icey
Is it just me, or is his pseudo-assembly language just a funny way to poke fun
at MagLev (and all the rejoicing surrounding its announcement)?

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jcl
So, in essence, Zed has come up with a dynamic front-end for the GNU Lightning
assembler?

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tptacek
Is this using Lightning? We've done SPARC and x86 in pure Ruby without
libraries here (for other reasons). You might be surprised how easy this stuff
is to do. I assumed he just emits instructions.

I don't know why he wastes time with an actual parseable assembly language.
Ruby and Python are vastly better languages than Assembler. They have all the
same textual features that Assembler has, plus a real programming language to
do things like virtualized registers.

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tptacek
The gulf between what seems like a jit assembler grafted to Ruby/DL and a jit
compiler for a language like Ruby seems vast. Cool project. Predicting it
isn't going to change the world, any more than Zed's "makefile for printed
books".

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pygy
The grandiloquence of the slides was written with the tongue in the cheek. The
project page is much more modest. <http://www.zedshaw.com/projects/earing/>

