risc or cisc

[Andrew Bennetts]

Daniel Silverstone wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-04-15 at 18:22 +1000, Robert Collins wrote:
> > I think a mini language is definitely more complex *today* but we're
> > adding more and more methods - and the complexity of creating good
> > abstractions is getting higher and higher.
> 
> A mini-language is one of the more obvious future-proof solutions.
> However there is a lot of sandboxing and protective issues which need
> addressing if you're going to go down this route. It's difficult to
> provide a completely generic solution and still be sure that nothing
> untoward will occur in terms of attack vector.
> 
> I like the idea more than just adding more and more verbs, but I am
> slightly worried by it.

That is essentially a condensed version of a phone conversation I had with
Robert today on this topic! :)

It depends somewhat on the mini-language.  A simple “just run these 6 things
in sequence unless one of them fails” is a very different proposition to
“here's some Turing-complete code to run”, for instance.  Perhaps a good way
to proceed is try to sketch out a possible mini-language and then refine
that proposal, rather than getting bogged down in debating abstract
concepts?

-Andrew.