Where to start learning Interpreter?

Mark Guzdial guzdial at cc.gatech.edu
Tue May 23 16:12:29 UTC 2000


This last term, I prepared a set of lectures on the Squeak VM, and 
comparing it to the Java VM.  The PowerPoint slides are at 
http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu:8888/cs2340/uploads/vm-ppt.zip

I found the VM Workshop papers REALLY helpful, especially the one by 
the Dolphin guys on how they changed things from the Blue Book 
definition.  I think that the Blue Book chapters were the most useful 
for me in getting started.  "Back to the Future" was more 
understandable to me after having read the Blue Book.

I also found that Sun's Java VM spec book is available off its 
website.  It wasn't all that useful, since it makes very few 
implementation requirements of the VM.  I found some of the material 
on Sun's website about its own VM useful, but it was hard to dig up. 
For example, looking up garbage collection in the Java website helped 
fairly little, until I found marketing press releases on the latest 
"HotSpot" compiler.  By comparing the new claims to the old claims in 
the earlier press releases, I was able to figure out some of the 
changes between the old and the new.

 From there, I started digging into the code, which made a lot more 
sense after the previous.

Mark


At 12:12 AM -0500 5/23/00, Dwight Hughes wrote:
>I would recommend starting with the paper "Back to the Future: The Story
>of Squeak, A Practical Smalltalk Written in Itself" by Dan Ingalls, Ted
>Kaehler, John Maloney, Scott Wallace, and Alan Kay - which outlines the
>primary differences between Squeak's interpreter and the classic
>interpreter presented in the BlueBook implementation chapters - and then
>fill in the details with these chapters -- I have all of this at my
>site: http://users.ipa.net/~dwighth/
>
>For the generational GC used in Squeak, take a look at "A Real Time
>Garbage Collector Based On The Lifetimes of Objects" by Henry Lieberman
>and Carl Hewitt,Communications of the ACM, June 1983:
>http://lieber.www.media.mit.edu/people/lieber/Lieberary/GC/GC.html
>
>There is also a nice set of slides Ian Piumarta made for a talk a while
>back, which I no longer seem to have a link for, but can send you a copy
>if you would like (~260KB) - only the first third or so is about the
>present VM, but it should be of interest.
>
>The OOPSLA '99 VM Workshop also included some papers that should be
>useful: http://www.squeak.org/oopsla99_vmworkshop/
>
>-- Dwight
>
> > "Michael T. Nygard" wrote:
> >
> > What's the best way to start learning the design and construction of
> > the interpreter?  I think it will be difficult to just start reading
> > the methods to form a gestalt understanding.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > --Michael T. Nygard
> >

--------------------------
Mark Guzdial : Georgia Tech : College of Computing : Atlanta, GA 30332-0280
Associate Professor - Learning Sciences & Technologies.
Collaborative Software Lab
(404) 894-5618 : Fax (404) 894-0673 : guzdial at cc.gatech.edu
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Faculty/Mark.Guzdial.html





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