Building a Wasm Compiler in Roc (series)

Let's rant a bit, as this isn't the first time one encounters this bit of trivia:

> Real-world compilers are incredibly complex pieces of software [1]

No they are not! What could be simpler than read a file and write another? Yet we have a culture where this is "incredibly complex", because we know it can fail at any time, for the silliest of reasons. It is an accusation of our state of affairs.

The code generation should be a part of the system we target, a core part of the OS, as any binary code can only be generated for a concrete system, which at authoring time is at best a presumption waiting to be invalidated, almost always sooner than we'd like. Double click a source file and it should execute. If necessary a dialog should pop up for us to fill in missing arguments.

This illustrates that we as a community do things wrong all the time. It's how we do things. It's what pays the bills. We are religious about it, as a stakeholder in evil. We repeat past mistakes.

We will be substituted by an AI that runs the show behind the scenes. Fuck off with your languages, build systems, operating systems, ABI, admin privileges and package managers. Nobody cares about the autistic fetish you're pushing. You're always trying to look into the future and anticipate all possible cases. Yeah, yeah, you're a genius, okay? Here's a cookie. Good boy. Now catch the ball, you self-sycophantic animal.

Don't let it be about you, free yourself, love what you do. The real problem is nobody else loves, for everybody is cursing each other in similar disgusting self-congratulatory orgasms, under the guise of capitalism. Forget that in society, the OS, you're worth more dead than alive [2].

[1] https://dusty.phillips.codes/2024/08/22/build-a-wasm-compile... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxTJAzLn2ew