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Sol — a sunny little homemade virtual machine

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Re: Sol — a sunny little homemade virtual machine

#41

Post by okal »

ojiikun wrote: post #12

Serious (non-snarky) question: are projects like this no longer standard fare for undergraduate CS majors? This example is rather comprehensive and well-documented, but is almost spot on what all 50-75 of us had to do for a Junior-level class at Georgia Tech back in 2003 or so.

Another possibility is the non-CS crowd on HN might be bigger than is generally assumed. I'm an ECE undergrad, though the programme at my school skews to EE rather than CS. Our compilers course always felt like an afterthought, with implementation being entirely at the instructors discretion. We mostly just drew a bunch of state diagrams :-)

Re: Sol — a sunny little homemade virtual machine

#42

Post by skrebbel »

simplekoala wrote: post #2

I didn't realize the author is a designer till I went to his about me page. Pretty awesome that he can write some serious code. Respect.

Wtf? Sure, making a decent VM that can actually do something is no empty feat, but that just means that he's not only a designer but also a programmer. It's not like you're stamped "designer" on your forehead at birth and that's it, you know.

I have a friend who can code and bake excellent pie. Amazing!!

Re: Sol — a sunny little homemade virtual machine

#43

Post by skrebbel »

jorde wrote: post #10
arnarbi wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow - he is also the designer brains behind the Spotify brand, which has always been impressive to me.

And now at Facebook. The best designers also code but creating your own programming languages and VMs... respect.

Rasmus, since you're reading this thread, I'm curious. If I understand correctly, you did the Spotify brand and looks as it stands. My compliments! What, then, has convinced you to move to a large and very much designed-out webapp like Facebook? I mean, it's not like the Like button and the blue Facebook bar weren't there before you came - this suggests that you downgraded from setting up an entire brand to doing a page here and a button there. But I bet that's not the case, because in that case you wouldn't have gone, right? Note: this is not criticism, quite the contrary: I can't imagine what Facebook has competent designers to offer and I'd like to know. (I wondered the same when they acqui-hired the Amsterdam design consultancy Sofa)

Re: Sol — a sunny little homemade virtual machine

#44

Post by khet »

skrebbel wrote: post #42
simplekoala wrote: post #2

I didn't realize the author is a designer till I went to his about me page. Pretty awesome that he can write some serious code. Respect.

Wtf? Sure, making a decent VM that can actually do something is no empty feat, but that just means that he's not only a designer but also a programmer. It's not like you're stamped "designer" on your forehead at birth and that's it, you know. I have a friend who can code and bake excellent pie. Amazing!!

Most designers can hardly FTP files to their server. Using the terminal is a terrifying idea. Writing code is a mountain of difficulty. I only know because I went through it myself.

Re: Sol — a sunny little homemade virtual machine

#45

Post by praptak »

ojiikun wrote: post #12

Serious (non-snarky) question: are projects like this no longer standard fare for undergraduate CS majors? This example is rather comprehensive and well-documented, but is almost spot on what all 50-75 of us had to do for a Junior-level class at Georgia Tech back in 2003 or so.

Implementing a multithreaded VM was part of the semester task to pass Compilers (Warsaw University, 1996.) The VM was a bare bones instruction set plus threading support. The rest of the task was to implement a compiler for a concurrency-supporting language targetting the VM.

The most tedious part was implementing a garbage collector on top of the VM (GC was not part of the VM spec) We grumbled a lot about this task :)

Re: Sol — a sunny little homemade virtual machine

#46

Post by rasmusfabbe »

skrebbel wrote: post #43
jorde wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now at Facebook. The best designers also code but creating your own programming languages and VMs... respect.

Rasmus, since you're reading this thread, I'm curious. If I understand correctly, you did the Spotify brand and looks as it stands. My compliments! What, then, has convinced you to move to a large and very much designed-out webapp like Facebook? I mean, it's not like the Like button and the blue Facebook bar weren't there before you came - this suggests that you downgraded from setting up an entire brand to doing a p…

Actually, we have some of the most talented designers I've ever met. Now, I'm working on things other than those you are bluntly describing. Most design work has been with special projects as well as our "native" apps. However, for the time being I've dedicated myself to software engineering around something I find very exciting. I probably said too much already.

Re: Sol — a sunny little homemade virtual machine

#47

Post by Raphael_Amiard »

skrebbel wrote: post #42
simplekoala wrote: post #2

I didn't realize the author is a designer till I went to his about me page. Pretty awesome that he can write some serious code. Respect.

Wtf? Sure, making a decent VM that can actually do something is no empty feat, but that just means that he's not only a designer but also a programmer. It's not like you're stamped "designer" on your forehead at birth and that's it, you know. I have a friend who can code and bake excellent pie. Amazing!!

Being good at two things is more impressive than being good at one thing. Making a full featured VM is something that even lot of professionnal programmers can't do. The implication that you are "stamped" something at your birth was totally absent of GP's post.

Re: Sol — a sunny little homemade virtual machine

#48

Post by chuppo »

rasmusfabbe wrote: post #46
skrebbel wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rasmus, since you're reading this thread, I'm curious. If I understand correctly, you did the Spotify brand and looks as it stands. My compliments! What, then, has convinced you to move to a large and very much designed-out webapp like Facebook? I mean, it's not like the Like button and the blue Facebook bar weren't there before you came - this suggests that you downgraded from setting up an entire brand to doing a p…

Actually, we have some of the most talented designers I've ever met. Now, I'm working on things other than those you are bluntly describing. Most design work has been with special projects as well as our "native" apps. However, for the time being I've dedicated myself to software engineering around something I find very exciting. I probably said too much already.

Yes, you said too much already.

There was a "spotify" or music service thing leaked from facebook js code a while back. So what you are saying facebookers will integrate even more closely with spotify. Listen to music in the browser with friends? Yey.

Re: Sol — a sunny little homemade virtual machine

#49

Post by makomk »

Raphael_Amiard wrote: post #47
skrebbel wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wtf? Sure, making a decent VM that can actually do something is no empty feat, but that just means that he's not only a designer but also a programmer. It's not like you're stamped "designer" on your forehead at birth and that's it, you know. I have a friend who can code and bake excellent pie. Amazing!!

Being good at two things is more impressive than being good at one thing. Making a full featured VM is something that even lot of professionnal programmers can't do. The implication that you are "stamped" something at your birth was totally absent of GP's post.

Yeah. Also, I reckon there are some actual production VMs less well designed than this one (for instance, the one Second Life uses for scripting).

Re: Sol — a sunny little homemade virtual machine

#50

Post by lucian1900 »

rasmusfabbe wrote: post #25
tarabukka wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call the concept itself too far-fetched. As a learning or teaching exercise, though, building virtual machines, languages, JIT compilers and the like is very interesting. I'm assuming that "Sol" is a play on "Lua", because both virtual machines seem similar.

A play at Lua: Definitely so. As mentioned and referenced in the article, Lua has been a major source of inspiration. As "lua" means "moon" in Portugese, it was only suiting to name "Sol" "sol" for "sun" in Swedish (my native tongue). However, as @chubot informed me (in a comment here on HN), Lua was once called "sol", or at least "sol" was considered for the name.

"Sol" is also "sun" in Portuguese, so even better :)
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