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The Neko Virtual Machine

nekovm.org

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Re: The Neko Virtual Machine

#2

Post by logicprog »

[edited after reading FAQ]

Minor criticism: It would be helpful to see some code so you can tell what you're going to have to be generating to use the VM. Especially since it's not bytecode or abstract machine instructions so it's hard to know what to expect.

Otherwise, this is an incredibly cool project, which I'm definitely going to check out more in the future. Out of curiosity, how does its performance and memory usage compare versus the JVM or even LLVM (for the standalone compiler)? It's a super cool idea to have a lightweight standardized VM to program for, but I think generating bytecode or LLVM IR would be easier to design a programming language atop, at least because it'd be less likely to be a leaky abstraction like JS transpilers. So it'd be nice to know if any more technical benefits.

One technical question, (forgive me I don't know what I'm talking about) why have a bytecode at all, since no users of the languages based on Neko VM will touch Neko PL themselves (usually), why can't Neko PL act as a bytecode?

Re: The Neko Virtual Machine

#3

Post by saagarjha »

logicprog wrote: post #2

[edited after reading FAQ] Minor criticism: It would be helpful to see some code so you can tell what you're going to have to be generating to use the VM. Especially since it's not bytecode or abstract machine instructions so it's hard to know what to expect. Otherwise, this is an incredibly cool project, which I'm definitely going to check out more in the future. Out of curiosity, how does its performance and memory…

I don't completely understand the background of this project, but I think this is supposed to be a scripting language that compiles down to bytecode, which lets you embed the interpreter (à la Lua) or VM into your application depending on what you want.

Re: The Neko Virtual Machine

#4

Post by codetrotter »

saagarjha wrote: post #3
logicprog wrote: post #2

[edited after reading FAQ] Minor criticism: It would be helpful to see some code so you can tell what you're going to have to be generating to use the VM. Especially since it's not bytecode or abstract machine instructions so it's hard to know what to expect. Otherwise, this is an incredibly cool project, which I'm definitely going to check out more in the future. Out of curiosity, how does its performance and memory…

I don't completely understand the background of this project, but I think this is supposed to be a scripting language that compiles down to bytecode, which lets you embed the interpreter (à la Lua) or VM into your application depending on what you want.

I’ve only ever heard of Neko in the context of Haxe, a scripting language created by the same people that make Neko. Never did look really closely into either of them though.

I found the following three resources helpful in getting a bit of an idea about what Neko really is beyond being a target VM of Haxe.

Neko C FFI - https://nekovm.org/doc/ffi/

A comparison of Neko and Lua - https://nekovm.org/doc/lua/

Language Interoperability - https://nekovm.org/doc/multilang/

Re: The Neko Virtual Machine

#7

Post by k_ »

Neko has been around for 10+ years and is being replaced progressively by HL (HashLink, [1]), from the same creator.

I mainly know Neko as one of many transpiling targets for Haxe programming language [2] (10+ targets including JS, PHP, C++), and have used it many years ago for all my backend stuff.

[1]: https://hashlink.haxe.org/ [2]: https://haxe.org/

Re: The Neko Virtual Machine

#8

Post by neals »

I always used Neko as the default VM to run Haxe code. I used it the same way most people now use NodeJS: tooling, simple webserver, quick prototype.

These days, I start new projects in NodeJS because teams don't know about Neko. Which is a shame because Neko and the Haxe language solve most critisism of NodeJS and JS in general.

Re: The Neko Virtual Machine

#10

Post by mkesper »

k_ wrote: post #7

Neko has been around for 10+ years and is being replaced progressively by HL (HashLink, [1]), from the same creator. I mainly know Neko as one of many transpiling targets for Haxe programming language [2] (10+ targets including JS, PHP, C++), and have used it many years ago for all my backend stuff. [1]: https://hashlink.haxe.org/ [2]: https://haxe.org/

Differences between Neko and Hashlink, why a new VM: https://haxe.org/blog/hashlink-indepth/
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