[Haskell-cafe] Compilers: Why do we need a core language?

[Richard O'Keefe]

On 21/11/2012, at 4:49 AM, <citb at lavabit.com> wrote:

>> What would be the point in doing so?
> 
> Well, I don't know. Would it save some time? Why bother with a core language?

For a high level language (and for this purpose, even Fortran 66 counts as
"high level") you really don't _want_ a direct translation from source code
to object code.  You want to eliminate unused code and you want to do all
sorts of analyses and improvements.  It is *much* easier to do all that to
a small core language than to the full source language.