Category talk:Plain English: Difference between revisions

:: The former appeared to work at first, seemingly being able to compile the compiler itself, producing an executable named <code>osmosian.exe</code> in the compiler folder, which works exactly as the original <code>cal-3040.exe</code>. In fact, it is ''exactly'' the same file, byte for byte. And that was a bit suspicious, so I tried the "official" sample program <code>source.txt</code> obtained from [http://osmosian.com/sample.zip]. And I was not very surprised when the result of compiling <code>source.txt</code> was again an executable named <code>osmosian.exe</code>; again a byte-for-byte copy of <code>cal-3040.exe</code>. In other words, the compiler didn't compile anything, it just created a copy of itself named <code>osmosian.exe</code>. Impressive.

:: Then I looked for another version of the compiler, thinking maybe <code>cal-3040.exe</code> is just buggy, and I found <code>cal-4700.exe</code>. The name suggests it is a newer, better version. Indeed, this one has a new feature – it only makes a copy of itself when ran on its own source. When compiling <code>source.txt</code>, it showed an error message <code>I need a routine to 'initialize before run'.</code> and besides that produced no output. Then I tested a few task implementations from RC. I picked those which were supposed to produce output, and thus prove that the program – and hence the compiler – works correctly. These tasks all contain a definition <code>To run:</code>, and they all ended up in an error message <code>Error in the desktop. I already know how to 'run'.</code> without producing any other output.