RE: JIT-compilation for OCaml?

["Mattias Waldau" <mattias.waldau@abc.se>]

Why do you want JIT? Do you use Java for regular development? It is a pain,
the reason is

1. Slow, slow
2. Big, big

and the reason that Java gets away with it, is the JIT-compiler. That mean
that after enormous start-time, the program might achieve resonable
performance after a couple of minutes. However, at that time, it still needs
10-20 extra megs, since the compiler is still loaded into memory.

The beatty of Ocaml are the fast compilers, the optimizing compiler is
faster than javac, which only produces bytecode. It is sad that so few
other programming language developers realizes that the speed of the
development environment matters.

The only thing Ocaml can learn from Java is its libraries. If I would invent
a programming language with a library today, I would just copy Java's
interface. Libraries are much harder to learn than programming languages,
thus standards are needed.


/mattias



-----Original Message-----
From: Pierre.Weis@inria.fr [mailto:Pierre.Weis@inria.fr]On Behalf Of
Markus Mottl
Sent: Tuesday, January 02, 2001 5:08 PM
To: OCAML
Subject: JIT-compilation for OCaml?


Hello,

one thing I just wondered about is whether there are any intentions
concerning a JIT-compiler for OCaml byte code similar to what Java
offers. This would allow much faster execution while still retaining
full portability of the byte code. Is this a goody we might expect in the
(near? far?) future?

- Markus Mottl

--
Markus Mottl, mottl@miss.wu-wien.ac.at, http://miss.wu-wien.ac.at/~mottl