The status of the Self language • Hacker News Board

Re: The status of the Self language

#21

Post by sb » Thu, Dec 02, 2010, 5:52 PM UTC

silentbicycle wrote: post #20

sb wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I know--it seems to be a recent pattern of mine to forget some links and add-on pointers... The papers are very good, in addition to these, I find the following to be particularly important (and very well written, too): - the classic PICs (polymorphic inline caching) paper ( http://selflanguage.org/documentation/published/pics.html ) - Urs Hoelzle's PhD thesis ( http://selflanguage.org/documentation/published/u…

Definitely, the PIC paper. Somehow I missed Urs Hoelzle's thesis. Nice! It has some papers on dynamically compiling APL in the biblio I haven't seen, too. :)

I found the APL papers interesting, too. Unfortunately, without the corresponding source code available, it is--at least for me--increasingly difficult to make sense of the APL papers and I am not sure/convinced this has anything to do with changed nomenclature. (For example, AFAIR, I don't really see inline caching in the description of "A Software High Performance Interpreter" by Saal and Weiss 1974.)

Re: The status of the Self language

#22

Post by silentbicycle » Thu, Dec 02, 2010, 6:01 PM UTC

sb wrote: post #21

silentbicycle wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely, the PIC paper. Somehow I missed Urs Hoelzle's thesis. Nice! It has some papers on dynamically compiling APL in the biblio I haven't seen, too. :)

I found the APL papers interesting, too. Unfortunately, without the corresponding source code available, it is--at least for me--increasingly difficult to make sense of the APL papers and I am not sure/convinced this has anything to do with changed nomenclature. (For example, AFAIR, I don't really see inline caching in the description of "A Software High Performance Interpreter" by Saal and Weiss 1974.)

The APL literature seems to be pretty insular, including terminology.

I've been investigating it as a fascinated outsider. Tim Budd's _An APL Compiler_ (http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~budd/Books/aplc/) covers some issues, but goes into much less depth than I hoped. That page has the source accompanying the book, though.

This guy's site (http://home.earthlink.net/~swsirlin/apl.html) has some further thoughts loosely based on that book and its compiler.

Re: The status of the Self language

#23

Post by sb » Thu, Dec 02, 2010, 8:08 PM UTC

silentbicycle wrote: post #22

sb wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found the APL papers interesting, too. Unfortunately, without the corresponding source code available, it is--at least for me--increasingly difficult to make sense of the APL papers and I am not sure/convinced this has anything to do with changed nomenclature. (For example, AFAIR, I don't really see inline caching in the description of "A Software High Performance Interpreter" by Saal and Weiss 1974.)

The APL literature seems to be pretty insular, including terminology. I've been investigating it as a fascinated outsider. Tim Budd's _An APL Compiler_ ( http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~budd/Books/aplc/ ) covers some issues, but goes into much less depth than I hoped. That page has the source accompanying the book, though. This guy's site ( http://home.earthlink.net/~swsirlin/apl.html ) has some further thoughts loo…

The APL literature seems to be pretty insular, including terminology.

I could not agree more, honestly! I think my route towards understanding some of the optimizations based on the current implementation of J and/or NARS2k (http://www.nars2000.org/), probably this is the route to enlightenment. Before embarking on that journey, I will read up on your hints, thank you very much!

Re: The status of the Self language

#24

Post by silentbicycle » Thu, Dec 02, 2010, 8:30 PM UTC

sb wrote: post #23

silentbicycle wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The APL literature seems to be pretty insular, including terminology. I've been investigating it as a fascinated outsider. Tim Budd's _An APL Compiler_ ( http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~budd/Books/aplc/ ) covers some issues, but goes into much less depth than I hoped. That page has the source accompanying the book, though. This guy's site ( http://home.earthlink.net/~swsirlin/apl.html ) has some further thoughts loo…

The APL literature seems to be pretty insular, including terminology. I could not agree more, honestly! I think my route towards understanding some of the optimizations based on the current implementation of J and/or NARS2k ( http://www.nars2000.org/ ), probably this is the route to enlightenment. Before embarking on that journey, I will read up on your hints, thank you very much!

If you want to continue this discussion, my contact info is in my profile. Take care.