Maxima as a compiler code generator component ?

I have worked both on the internals of Maxima and on the internals of
optimizing compilers.

Though I think there are some important possible applications of Maxima to
programming (for example, symbolic evaluation for testing, etc.), it seems
very unlikely that Maxima is the right tool for a production-quality
optimizing compiler.

This approach does not use most of Maxima's power and generality, but it
pays the price for them, so is likely to be many orders of magnitude slower
than any custom-built pattern matcher for a code generator.

On the other hand, Maxima might be a good testbed for experimenting with new
approaches, or for precalculating code sequences.  But even there, you need
to be careful.  Many of the transformations that Maxima performs are valid
mathematically, but not numerically.  For example, floating-point addition
is not associative.

Good luck on your project.

        -s