Hi Kent,
As long as the language is Turing-complete it can be used to generate another language of any complexity. It is certainly possible to build a compiler in pure thinBASIC though it might perform at a leisurely pace. My first attempt at a a compiler many years ago, for an 8088 based computer board I designed. It was written with mBasic, the standard Microsoft interpreter. (Later we compiled it with BASCOM). It was adequate for testing the board, and establishing basic communications.

With Oxygen, I've been pushing the boundaries - but neglected the basics which are at least as important. So I will try to remedy this by posting some short pieces which are relatively easy to follow. These will form part of the h2o kernel.