Caterpillar

At some point, the host could be a concept that only exists at compile-time. Well, at least as far as Caterpillar-specific functionality is concerned. There would still be some kind of generic, 3rd-party host that Caterpillar code interacts with. In the form of an operating system, or the hardware directly.

But bridging between the platform and Caterpillar code is not all that the host does. It also manages the communication between the (host-agnostic) runtime and the debugger. And that is essential, since immediacy and interactivity form Caterpillar's central premise. This is also code that the compiler could be taught to generate, of course, but I wonder if there's a better way.

Maybe I can define a standard interface for the host-specific features that support interactivity. The communication with the debugger, and updating code. Then this could be implemented in the runtime and linked into the program. Or, even better, it could be implemented in Caterpillar code, and live alongside the regular code for the Caterpillar program.