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The Second Lesson

The kernel compiler has stood up and been seen. It’s ~2,000 lines total — a reader, a dispatch table, and a pretty-printer. It reads text, walks a tree, and produces JavaScript. No optimizer. No runtime. No magic.

“That’s the whole thing?”

“That’s the whole thing.”

“Where’s the type system?”

“Chapter 31.”

Mr. Kernel Compiler sits back down. It has learned the second lesson of Not Being Seen: don’t be bigger than you need to be.

“And now,” says the narrator, “we ask the surface compiler to stand up.”

That’s a bigger explosion.