Re: Concatenative Hardware Redux (Another 16 Instruction Set)

> The problem is that if the 16 instructions
> you choose exclude commonly used ones, your programmers will not only
> be annoyed,

I'm not really designing the thing to be implemented by hand, I would
expect the programmer to use a compiler.

> their programs will wind up taking MORE space, since they
> have to use 2 or 3 opcodes to implement what could have been done with
> 1 5-bit opcode.

That line of reasoning isn't accurate. Just because you have fewer
opcodes doesn't mean you will neccessarily take more space. It really
has to do with how well balanced the instruction set is for the
problem domain. One isn't a clear win over the other. Of course, what
I propose is probably naive enough (because I haven't performed any
practical experimentation) so as not to be very space efficient at
this point.

- Christopher