Re: LuaJIT without the JIT?

[steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@...>]

On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 12:41 PM, Francesco Abbate
<francesco.bbt@gmail.com> wrote:

Nice summary.

> So Java is both boring to write with a lot of boiler-plate
> declarations and so on and the execution environment is largely
> suboptimal with a lot of resources required, the omnipresent GC.

Ah, but boring is often good. It is useful to have a compiler to save
us from ourselves, and the straightforward syntax of Java makes the
tool support very good.

Big Lua programs do exist (e.g. Adobe Lightroom) but they need good
engineering and discipline to be manageable;  the industry likes Java
because the discipline is built-in and the coding environment
compensates somewhat for the limitations of the language.[1]

A really good development environment for Lua could approach code
analysis like a JIT compiler; by evaluating the code dynamically, it
learns what the _likely_ argument types are for functions, and _which_
functions were actually called.  A approach similar to Smalltalk could
work, in which you work on a 'live patient': a constantly evolving
process where code is dynamically modified.

This would be a fine project for an intelligent person looking for
something non-trivial to do.

steve d.

[1] ok yes, people still write nonsense. But no environment will stop
that, unless Eclipse achieves sentience and says "I'm sorry Dave, I
can't allow you to do that"