[Grace-core] RFC: Compile-time constants

[James Noble]

On 3/05/2014, at 12:58 pm, Andrew P Black <andrew.p.black at gmail.com> wrote:

> Of course,  semantically,  there is no phase distinction (between compile- and run-time) in the language.  

right - and I'd like to keep it that way.  So I'd need some convincing that we should introduce 
an alternative to "def" that depends on this distinction

> Pragmatically, the compiler can lay down the object structure at compile time; 

that depends on the language. The definitively static rule lets us do that.
But increasingly this seems to be passé.   If we're doing our own VM or 
compiling to JS (or python, or lua, or... ) then they can cope with per-object
layouts. But a relatively simple static compiler C or machine code or the JVM
(probably anything likely to go quick on the JVM) does need to know object
layout "statically".  

James