Close language milestone release 0.1: Reimplement PCT::Node

[Austin Hastings]

Howdy,

I'm please to announce that the first Close milestone has been met: 
Reimplement PCT::Node.

Close is a systems programming language aimed at the PVM, with registers 
and expressions and curly braces.

    "It's not 'C', but it's close."

This milestone represents the first point at which I'm comfortable 
saying that Close is a "usable"     programming language. (Of course, 
it's still nowhere near being complete. Or useful.) I chose the 
reimplementation of one file - the base class for the PCT system - as an 
achievable chunk that would expose Close to the needs of a real-world 
application. In addition, PCT is exactly the kind of thing Close is 
aimed at: code that's too low-level to write in Perl/NQP, and that's too 
high-level to write in PIR.(*)

Here's an example of Close code: 
http://code.google.com/p/close/source/browse/trunk/library/pct/PCT/Node.c%3D

The next Close milestone is reimplementing PCT. That will demonstrate 
Close as a systems language. Since some shortcuts (i.e., "asm {{ ... 
}}") were taken for 0.1, I expect 0.2 to require a few weeks.

The Close project is online at http://code.google.com/p/close and of 
course I'm looking for help. At the very least I could use some test 
cases written, but there are some big pieces of the language not written 
yet. (Like 'switch' and 'for'.) If you want to learn to use the PCT, 
here's a great opportunity.

Thanks for your time,

=Austin

(*) According to me, *all* code is too high-level to write in PIR. I 
spent years of my life working in assembly, and don't want to do it 
again. Ever.