Timeline for Meaning of Machine in Compiler Theory
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
6 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 5, 2019 at 11:42 | comment | added | JacquesB | @PeterM: I added "low-level" because interpreters of high-level languages are usually not called virtual machines. E.g. Java or Python as a whole could be called a virtual machine by this definition, but only the sub-component which execute the low-level bytecode is called the virtual machine. | |
| Jan 4, 2019 at 20:55 | comment | added | Peter M | IMHO you don't need the "low-level" qualifier. I would simply state that "A machine is just something which executes code". | |
| Jan 4, 2019 at 20:06 | comment | added | Jörg W Mittag | "(An operating system is not typically considered a machine though since it doesn't directly execute code, it just provides some services for the CPU.)" – Well, in one of my software engineering courses, the professor defined a virtual machine as something that fully abstracts something that underlies it. According to that definition, all non-leaky APIs would be virtual machines, and an OS certainly counts. Also note that it makes sense to interpret and analyze an OS (or rather its ABI) as a language, and every language gives rise to a machine for that language. So, it's not as clear-cut. | |
| Jan 4, 2019 at 17:25 | history | edited | JacquesB | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 2 characters in body
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| Jan 4, 2019 at 16:44 | comment | added | Delsilon | "Outside of compiler theory, machine typically just means computer." Right, I had done computer organization and there I only assumed machine to be computer and it worked fine for me. :) | |
| Jan 4, 2019 at 16:38 | history | answered | JacquesB | CC BY-SA 4.0 |