[Vm-dev] Numbered primitives (was: Cog Primitive Performance)

[David T. Lewis]

On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 09:57:54AM -0700, Cl??ment Bera wrote:
>

<snip>

> For each primitive, we need to evaluate the performance with and without
> the primitive. In each case, we either move the primitive to numbered
> primitive or we just use normal Smalltalk code.

Please no more numbered primitives. We should be eliminating numbered primitives,
not adding more.

The only justification I can see for a numbered primitive today is to identify
it as one of the small number of primitives that absolutely must be available
when porting the VM to a new platform, especially if that platform may not
easily support the loading of functions by name. Aside from that, we should
insist that /all/ primitives be named primitives.

Dave