On Sat, Jun 11, 2011 at 2:05 AM, David Barbour <dmbarb...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 11:48 AM, Ondrej Bilka <nel...@seznam.cz> wrote: >> >> My point is that you could just Object have methods true,false and nil >> Any reasonably optimalizing compiler would replace them with bytecode. > > As methods, you could override them. And since you don't know which > subclasses override these methods, you couldn't optimize.
This is a very limited way of thinking about your compiler. It hasn't been mainstream thinking since the advent of Java, which turned "conventional compiler technology" on its head. (Obviously, the ideas quite predate Java, but I'm just speaking of point at which the majority of papers in academic compiler conferences (say, PLDI) suddenly shifted away from purely static compilation.) --scott -- ( http://cscott.net ) _______________________________________________ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc