Comments on: Which VM?

By: Kirby Urner

Kirby Urner — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 06:42:21 +0000

The new Google Go language seems like it might serve as a basis for a new VM, including for Python. Languages and VMs jump around. Python currently targets the Java VM (Jython), the .NET/Mono VM (IronPython), plus has its own C language VM. Then there’s the PyPy VM and Unladen Swallow. Why stop there? A VM in the Go language would probably be at least as powerful as a VM in the C# language.

By: Has the JVM design been holding back Java? | Chui’s counterpoint

Has the JVM design been holding back Java? | Chui’s counterpoint — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:58:35 +0000

[...] 1Update 5 Sept, I was wrong. See this 2Incidentally, addressing this use-case on the server-side could be a boon for Java on shared hosters. I would like to see the JVM be a viable competitor to PHP. See Matthieu Riou. [...]

By: turtlewax

turtlewax — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:28:04 +0000

>>arenâ€™t that many robust languages implementations
>>running on Mono

What about java; runs well enough in ikvm in both .NET and mono.I’ve had a lot of success running the java ant libraries in .NET via ikvm

By: Chui

Chui — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 00:00:50 +0000

@Uli: If Flash had the same start-up time as Java applets, it would have been DOA years ago.

By: Cyrus

Cyrus — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 21:09:05 +0000

Second to LLVM. Language interoperability is only feasible if your virtual machine supports a superset of all the features of all the languages you want to support. LLVM can support everything from C (imagine that, C running within your VM rather than some crazy serialization scheme to call “native” code) to LISP (which requires an unhealthy amount of access to internals to support all the dynamicism it supports, particularly with regard to run-time modification of code.)

Apple is behind LLVM and many of the LLVM developers are now Apple employees. Its even deployed in some of Apple’s legacy interop code for their graphics subsystems.

What is really needed is a couple of killer apps. Show that Python can run faster in LLVM than the Python VM, for example. Build a Firefox LLVM plug-in that JIT’s Javascript faster than Spidermonkey, and lets you program the DOM with your choice of language at that.

Since it was originally an academic project, there isn’t a drive in the community to go through the “uninteresting” parts that would be required for a full implementation of a popular language. Apple might do it for Objective-C, but they don’t care about other languages. I’m hopeful someone will step up and give it some love, and if so it will be the next big thing. Otherwise, I’m going to have to go with the DLR unless the Tamarin teams puts in the effort to go language-neutral.

By: Matthieu Riou

Matthieu Riou — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:00:47 +0000

@Paul: I’ve checked LLVM some time ago and they seemed more interested in low level languages like C, C++ and Forth. As a result they were missing higher-level features like a garbage collector. It seems that they’ve fixed that recently though so it might be worth another look.
And Javascript for now is still painfully slow…

@Assaf: If so, they’re far from ready. Last time I checked the Tamarin Javascript compiler (called ESC) didn’t work for even simple expressions. And they don’t seem to be working very actively on it (see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=451145). I think they’re barely recovering from ECMAscript 4 limbo and it’s going to take them a while to migrate away from SpiderMonkey.

@Uli: Actually the problem they had with the JVM is the licensing. They’re not comfortable with GPL, which I can understand. Also even if the JVM is supposed to be open source, it’s still not, a few years after the original announcement. Finally AVM2 is a conservative choice for them, it was already tailored for ActionScript which is very close to Javascript.

By: Uli W.

Uli W. — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:16:06 +0000

Think about the future.
What VM will dominate the future generation of multi- and manycore-processors? Simple answer: the best! And the best VM is the one with the most human and financial resources available. Let’s say it’s the one made by companies like IBM, Intel, Sun or Microsoft.

But there is no place for two different VM’s in the so-called “free world”. Mozilla/Adobe made an enormous mistake to go NIH and to reject the technology offered by the Java-community.
The successor of the JVM will win the race and not Adobe and Mozilla. Too bad that the OpenSource-community has NIH-problems like that.

By: Assaf

Assaf — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 06:53:07 +0000

Whatever Mozilla uses.

a) it’s made for a dynamic language.
b) they pay attention to startup time.
c) and performance.
d) and memory (now that FF is going mobile).
e) cross-platform file I/O, HTTP, XML, SQLite.
f) security.
g) native UI.
h) momentum.

You’re assuming things like I/O, SQLite, native UI components, desktop integration, etc are not available to JavaScript because HTML scripts are sandboxes. But the chrome is written entirely in JS, all these features are accessible to the VM when running outside the sandbox.

By: Paul Brown

Paul Brown — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 04:33:02 +0000

What about LLVM (http://llvm.org/)? (See PyPy for an example.) Failing that, cross-compiling to Javascript as an intermediate seems like a good way to go, rather than direct to a specific VM.