Last time I mused aloud about "refactoring" Perl, I referenced Chromatic's statement/challenge:

"If I were to implement a language now, I'd write a very minimal core suitable for bootstrapping. ... Think of a handful of ops. Think very low level. (Think something a little higher than the universal Turing machine and the lambda calculus and maybe a little bit more VMmy than a good Forth implementation, and you have it.) If you've come up with something that can replace XS, stop. You're there. Do not continue. That's what you need." (Chromatic, January 2013)

I know next to nothing about XS, so I started reading perldoc.

I'm thinking about the problem, so if there is a question, it would be "what NOW?"

Should I bother with thinking about bytecodes? In what sense could it be a replacement for XS? What does "replace XS" even MEAN? (i.e. perhaps it just means "remove the need to use perl's guts to write extensions, and improve the API").

Most importantly, am I wasting people's time by asking?

I'm trying to come up with my own answers, and learn by trying. But wisdom is in knowing that some of you guys have already thought through this. If you can help bring me up to speed, I'd appreciate it.

UPDATE: I see even within the Lorito page, it was understood that the discussion was to some degree about Perl's API: "This is an issue of API design. If we understand the non-essential capabilities we want to support (e.g. optimization passes, etc), we can design the API so that such capabilities can be exploited but not required. - cotto "

In reply to Refactoring Perl5 with XS++ by rje

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