From: ptkwt@...1.aracnet.com (Phil Tomson) Date: 2001-11-28T10:10:10+09:00 Subject: [ruby-talk:26725] Re: Vote in the current poll! In article , Robert Feldt wrote: >On Wed, 28 Nov 2001, Phil Tomson wrote: > >> >Basically do you think there is a market for a Ruby compiler and binary >> >tools? (sure it would be great if its free but if one wants >> >commercial-grade stuff I think someone needs to pay a little; maybe >> >only companies?) Or would you be content with a faster interpreter? >> >> Personally, I'd be content with a faster interpreter (VM?). Compilers for >> a language like Ruby seem to be somewhat problematic because of the >> dynamic nature of the language - I'm not sure you would get as much of a >> speedup as is implied. >> >IMHO, you can get a considerable speed-up. AOS/SmallScript is a case in >point (but I'm in the beta program and not allowed to give any >figures). Its not easy but it can be done. I was under the impression that SmallScript is bytecode compiled - it gets compiled to bytecode and then a VM runs the bytecode - which I think is really considered to be in the realm of interpreted as opposed to compiled (it is kind of a gray area), but maybe I'm wrong. When you say 'compiled' it makes my think that you mean 'compiled to native machine code'. Anybody know how Ruby's VM (intended for the 2.0 release, I think) is progressing? Phil