in reply to Re: Re: Is perl scalable?
in thread Is perl scalable?

[People think that Perl is interpreted and Java isn't] because they have to run javac before they can execute Java code!

Many JVMs do incremental compilation, using technology pioneered in Smalltalk and Self, though it's probably true that the fact of there being a separate "compilation" phase, by a thing called a "compiler" confuses many people about what's really going on under the covers.

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Re: Re: Re: Re: Is perl scalable?
by perrin (Chancellor) on Dec 06, 2002 at 03:30 UTC
    You mean incremental compilation like Hotspot does? That's a bit different, since it's compiling from bytecode to machine language. I wonder if a just-in-time compiler would make a difference in Perl performance. Then again, it's already as fast or faster than Java for everything I've ever tried, so maybe it isn't worth the complexity.
[reply]
      You mean incremental compilation like Hotspot does? That's a bit different, since it's compiling from bytecode to machine language.

      The end result of incremental compilation, though, is code translated to machine instructions. That's what most people think of when they think of compiled languages. Incremental compilation just throws a delay into the works.

[reply]

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