[Vm-dev] Re: [Pharo-dev] blog post

[Florin Mateoc]

On 9/10/2013 11:39 AM, Eliot Miranda wrote:
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> On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 8:50 PM, Florin Mateoc <florin.mateoc at gmail.com <mailto:florin.mateoc at gmail.com>> wrote:
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>     Ha! Your "Smalltalk isn't JavaScript" just made a light bulb go on. But isn't (or shouldn't) Slang (be) asm.js ?
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> No.  Adaptive optimization/speculative inlining (which one could characterize as run-time type inference) is more
> interesting.  If AO/SI is applied to a closed world and tests can cause complete coverage then I contend one can
> translate a pure dynamically-typed VM implementation to C or machine code without type annotations (or at least with
> minimal type annotations).  Clearly there are holes here.  One cannot practicably cover e.g. conversion from 64-bit
> integer or float values to tagged 61-bit integer or float immediates.  But one can e.g. convert algorithms using Set
> and Dictionary into inlined closure-free code.  That's what Self/Strongtalk/HotSpot does.  As I understand it that's
> part of the goals behind Gerardo Richarte and Javier Burroni's VM.   asm.js is similar to the Slang approach and I
> think both are poor.
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It is true that the closed world assumption applies well here. Plus, a similar belief made me interested in type
inference in the first place - I even think ahead of time compilation could do a very good job

Regards,
Florin
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