Re: Diversity - existence, value, and pursuit.

[Shriram Krishnamurthi <address@hidden>]

Simon Cozens wrote:

> On Sat, Dec 01, 2001 at 03:56:13PM -0800, Terrence Brannon wrote:
> > >>Given that there are Scheme implementations which execute as fast
> > >>a C...
> 
> > and am wondering how an interpreted virtual machine will execute 
> > as fast as C.
> 
> Something is wrong here. :)

Nothing is wrong here.  Scheme compilers have been around since 1976
(or 75 or 74 or something like that -- Guy Steele, who's on this list,
is uniquely qualified to fill in the implicit blank).  Some of them
will even generate assembly code in the heap and jump right into it
and execute it.  I expect numerous Common Lisp, Smalltalk and other
implementations have done this also.

Only a person who can't distinguish the perfectly meaningful phrase,
"interactive implementation of a language", from the nonsensical
phrase, "interpreted language", would see a problem here.

Shriram