Thanks all, I'll give said paper a read and see if it has the details I'm digging for. I was already passively aware of the static typing issue, but wondered if there were others.
kt
________________________________
From: Paolo Molaro [mailto:lu...@debian.org]
Sent: Fri 4/2/2004 5:09 AM
To: perl6-intern...@perl.org
Subject: Re: Newbie Question
On 04/01/04 Goplat wrote:
> > I read in the FAQ, vis a vis using the .NET instead of writing your own
> > "The .NET VM didn't even exist when we started development, or at least we
> > didn't know about it when we were working on the design. We do now, though
> > it's still not suitable."
[...]
> Those VMs are designed for statically typed languages. That's fine,
> since Java, C#, and lots of other languages are statically typed. Perl
> isn't. For a variety of reasons, it means that Perl would run more
> slowly there than on an interpreter geared towards dynamic languages.
People may want to take a look at this paper:
http://www.python.org/pycon/dc2004/papers/9/IronPython_PyCon2004.html It suggests a few techniques to implement dynamic languages on the CLR
(some surprisingly similar to the ones I suggested on these lists or in
private emails to people asking: kudos to Jim for actually writing the
code instead of just talking like me:-).
As it has been suggested, python on the CLR runs significantly faster
for some programs and significantly slower for others: now to find out
what case is more prevalent in common code:-) It seems safe to say,
though, that it can run rougthly at the same speed as the current C
implementation, but with all the interoperability advantages that
running on the CLR gives. That sounds good enough for me: I would pay a
50% speed degradation on the dynamic language side when I can easily
implement the time-critical code in C# and have that chunk run 10+
times faster. This new version of IronPython seems to
implement all/most of the semantics of python so it's also likely that
it could be improved to be even faster.
Note also his conclusions, though:
"IronPython can run fast on .NET and presumably on any decent
implementation of the CLR. Python is an extremely dynamic language and
this offers compelling evidence that other dynamic languages should be
able to run well on this platform. However, implementing a dynamic
language for the CLR is not a simple process. The CLR is primarily
designed to support statically typed OO and procedural languages.
Allowing a dynamic language to run well on this platform requires
careful performance tuning and judicious use of the underlying CLR
constructs."
lupus
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