[Grace-core] RFC: Compile-time constants

[James Noble]

On 5/05/2014, at 12:10 PM, Timothy Jones <tim at ecs.vuw.ac.nz> wrote:

> Runtime, at the call site. I understand that the C compilation prevents this
> from happening though.

there's a big difference between language rules and implementations - but also dependencies.  
As the language features get more powerful, efficient implementations get more complex. 

C compilation does not "prevent" a language with very dynamic semantics - 
although the C that is produced will be less efficient than e.g. a language
without lexical scope,  dynamic dispatch, and a common syntax for both.

James