miniblog.

Zig has moved to a compiler bootstrap approach that uses webassembly: https://ziglang.org/news/goodbye-cpp/ They check in the wasm artifact and provide their own wasm compiler. wasm is the most portable backend supported by LLVM. OCaml does something similar! It includes a minimal VM.

If I ever bootstrap a self hosting language, I'd be really tempted to do it in JS or TS. Not only are JS runtimes widely available, but it'd be way easier to do in-browser playgrounds!

If I created a brand new programming language today, I'd be very tempted to write a bootstrap compiler in JS. This would make it much easier to provide web playgrounds for people to write small programs and play with the language.