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

[Eliot Miranda]

On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 9:11 AM, Florin Mateoc <florin.mateoc at gmail.com>wrote:

>
>  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>wrote:
>
>>
>>  Ha! Your "Smalltalk isn't JavaScript" just made a light bulb go on. But
>> isn't (or shouldn't) Slang (be) asm.js ?
>>
>
>  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
>

+1

-- 
best,
Eliot
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