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

[Florin Mateoc]

On 9/10/2013 1:06 PM, Eliot Miranda wrote:
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> On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 9:11 AM, Florin Mateoc <florin.mateoc at gmail.com <mailto:florin.mateoc at gmail.com>> wrote:
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>     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
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> -- 
> best,
> Eliot

Do let me know when you get to write it like that (pure dynamically-typed). I assume the VM that you refer to includes
the JIT, so this would cover some of the code generation as well. Nice bootstrap issue to have, especially if most of
the compilation happens as source-to-source transformations. I'd sure like to be involved with that

Florin
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