From: Robert Feldt <feldt@...>
Date: 2004-08-22T19:00:36+09:00
Subject: Re: ruby, actors, continuations, Kernel#callcc

zuzu wrote:

>not likely as an advantage over other languages...  such low level
>design would probably end up looking alot more like the parrot VM than
>a single-language interpreter, 
>
That last part was with tongue-in-cheek. I seriously doubt it would look 
anything like a Parrot VM though, more than at a very artificial level.

>or at least the development process
>would allow other languages to follow suit in parallel.
>
>  
>
Well, what kind of research or open-source development would not?

>however, lisp and smalltalk machines were developed.
>programming language as the OS is not unheard of.
>
>the more things change, the more they stay the same.
>
>  
>
Sure, but they were trying to build custom chips implementing lisp/st 
VM's (at least to my knowledge); what would be more 
up-to-date/interesting now would be to take a certain piece of code (in 
Ruby or what have you) and compile that part into an FPGA config 
realizing the same computational process. That is a real challenge that 
I imagine much research is going into. For example there are the 
"similar" efforts to get C compilers to compile for modern GPU's etc.

/R