RE: book

[Greg Wilson <address@hidden>]

> From: jeremy@alum.mit.edu [mailto:jeremy@alum.mit.edu]
> This thread started with the question of whether there was a book that
> addressed the pragmatics of interpreter design.  I think Shriram is
> right to question whether the questioner really wanted a book about
> interpreters or about language implementation techniques, where
> interpretation is one possible technique.

Well, as the questioner, I think I can speak to that ;-).  The languages
I used in my youth (Pascal, C, and Fortran) were typically implemented by
making as many decisions as possible at compile time.  The languages I
used today (Python and Java) typically run on virtual machines, and
typically leave many decisions to run-time.  The distinction isn't hard
and fast --- C++ is an old-style language that makes many run-time
decisions, for example --- but most compiler courses focus on the first
family, and pay much less attention to the special needs of the second.
Gudeman's paper is a prime example of the kind of material we're missing:
you just don't worry about the run-time costs of various type encoding
schemes in C, because there is no run-time type encoding.

Thanks
Greg

p.s. for those who missed it the first time around, Gudeman's paper is:
ftp://ftp.cs.arizona.edu/reports/1993/TR93-27.ps


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