From: MikkelFJ <mikkelfj-anti-spam@...>
Date: 2002-10-17T00:43:39+09:00
Subject: Re: Psyco


"Phil Tomson" <ptkwt@shell1.aracnet.com> wrote in message
news:aoichg02ir8@enews2.newsguy.com...

> It's an interesting idea, but first we need a bytecode interpreter.  As it
> stands now, Ruby is interpreted by walking an AST.

I'd rather see a proper native code compiler. JIT's are not that great,
there is overhead in the compilation process and there is no time nor
opportunity for decent optimizations. For tight lops they may be good, but
then we already have inline C.

I think the OCaml model based on the Zinc compiler is great. I generates
bytecode which can execute, or it generates native assembler from the
compile time internal byte code representation. Thus your source is
portable, you have portable bytecode which executes fast, and you have the
option for native execution on selected platforms. All without involving a
bloated JIT compiler at runtime. In fact I think it would be cool to compile
Ruby code into the OCaml runtime.

Mikkel