Mel Pullen

This is a forgotten gem. MINT (originally called Snibbol) is a dictionary based language system. It has a small interpreter (stack based with multiple stacks) and the compiler is capable of compiling itself. In normal operations because the compiler is so small it remains in the system in all phases, so you get compilation facilities at run time. This enables the MINT system to implement Domain Specific Languages (DSL) with less than a page of code. That's because the dictionaries can be used to implement different actions at introduction, code generation and run time phases. The main designer, David Hendry, was the son of a professor of linguistics so he had a unique view of how to interpret language. He worked with a brilliant programmer, Robbie Hessenberg, and the result is the parser can cope with postfix, prefix and infix notation. Sadly this language has fallen out of favour but not out of use. Because of its extreme portability (a 1k interpreter, a portable load format and a VM acceptance test program), MINT is used in protocol converters and semiconductor design.