From: Rafael 'Dido' Sevilla <dido@...>
Date: 2002-08-09T11:42:02+09:00
Subject: Re: Compiling Ruby to Native Code?

On Thu, Aug 08, 2002 at 08:45:07AM +0900, Lothar Scholz wrote:
> Dynamic typing is the one and only problems !
> It seems that you never did serious Objective-C programming otherwise
> you would now that this is C with objects and most of the important
> data structure algorithms are done with the static c types.
> 

Are you trying to say that if I do:

gcc -x objective-c -o test test.m -lobjc

the resulting executable is *NOT* native code?  All I've been trying to
say is that a native code compiler does exist for Objective-C, and
dynamic typing has not stopped NeXT/GCC from making it.

> You will never get a compiler so efficient as Ocaml or Eiffel in
> dynamic languages - both are able to do full system analysis. So they
> don't need any checks about virtual methods.
> 

The fact is this inefficiency exists does not change the fact that you
*can* make a native code compiler for the language.  Unless your program
is highly method invocation-bound, the native code version will probably
run much faster than the interpreted one.  And even then, it may be
possible to provide optimizations; I imagine a lot of research has gone
into optimizing dynamic method invocations, as polymorphism is worthless
without some form of dynamic typing.

-- 
Rafael R. Sevilla <dido at imperium dot ph>	+63(2)8123151
Software Developer, Imperium Technology Inc.	+63(917)4458925