[squeak-dev] Can we extract type information from the VM?

Florin Mateoc florin.mateoc at gmail.com
Sun Sep 15 16:38:33 UTC 2013


On 9/15/2013 11:47 AM, Frank Shearar wrote:
> On 15 Sep 2013, at 14:57, Florin Mateoc <florin.mateoc at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 9/15/2013 5:54 AM, Frank Shearar wrote:
>>> I was rereading Phlip's "what's wrong with our IDEs" post -
>>> http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2008/05/dynamic_languages_vs_editors.html
>>> - and realised that he's just verbalised something I've only
>>> half-thought.
>>>
>>> When we run our tests (because of course we're using TDD) we know the
>>> precise types/expected classes of everything, because the VM
>>> automatically collects (or can collect) this information.
>>>
>>> But how do we get that information out of the VM?
>>>
>>> frank
>>>
>>>
>> You don't need to extract it from the VM, you can have a type profiler that collects it for you in the image.
> Doesn't that just mean twice as much work? The VM of necessity has already typed the call sites (even if the typing is only eventually correct). Why could a mirror not expose the typing thus far?
>
> frank
>
>> Florin
>>
>


Doing it in the image means you do it in Smalltalk. Extracting it from the VM means you are doing it in C/assembly.
And I definitely do not understand the argument with twice as much work. Work for whom? For the computer? Well, that's
its job. As the developer, you only do it once, regardless which option you chose. I prefer doing it in Smalltalk


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