A programming language and an implementation of that language
...Source code is compiled on-the-fly when loaded from a source file or entered via the shell. A source file can also be precompiled into a stored binary form and automatically recompiled when its dependencies change. Whether compiling on the fly or precompiling, the compiler produces optimized machine code, with some optimization across separately compiled library boundaries.
LIME (Less-is-More) is parallel/concurrent programming environment based on C. Internally, it uses XML technology to describe tasks and their dependencies. Externally, it offers the ANSI C99 programming as well as a set of visually-oriented interfaces.
Schemer is a scheme-based build tool, initially created to handle dependencies. Build files are written in pure scheme, with new syntax defined to handle dependency checking.