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by amw-zero 499 days ago
I think it's much better to just learn how to read inference rules. They're actually quite simple, and are used ubiquitously to define PL semantics definitions.

Constraining this on "that's not an option" is a big waste of time - learning this will open up all of the literature written on the subject.

1 comments

The WASM spec is so well defined presumably because Andreas Rossberg is the editor - and he did a bunch of PL research on extensions to Standard ML, which is famous for it's specification!
I totally agree. Standard ML set the stage for everyone to finally formally specify a full language, and only WebAssembly has carried the torch as far as I know (other than small research languages).