overriding built-ins

[Andrew Dalke]

dan:
> However that brings up an interesting issue: the plethora of new
> languages with bytecode interpreters (Java, Python, C#) are starting
> to concern me.  It seems like there could be a place for some sort of
> standardized, low-level bytecode syntax, so that work on things like
> JIC compilation can occur independently of high-level changes and
> alternatives to source syntax.

The .Net system was supposed to help some of that.  As I recall, some
changes were made to make it easier to support tail recursive languages.

For something targeted to dynamically typed languages, look up
"Parrot", which is part of the Perl6 effort and which is also supposed
to support Python.  There's a challenge out that Parrot will run some
appropriate benchmark (yet to be decided) faster than the CPython
implementation by some time next year.  (OSCON?)

                    Andrew
                    dalke at dalkescientific.com