I'm especially interested to know what a full-on native code compiler can do for you that a JIT can't

Oh I've nothing against JIT. Compilation to native code is compilation to native code (if we ignore all that tedious mucking about with caching and timing of the compiles).

As for benchmarks take a look at Lisp is slow (NOT!) for an example of CMUCL and SBCL (compiled Lisps) beating out C++ in a benchmark.

Please don't take this to mean that I think compilation to native code is necessary, or that interpreted VMs are useless and slow. Premature optimisation and all that. I will quite happily use Perl 6 running on an interpreted Parrot and I'm sure it will do all that I need it to do. The domains that I spend most of my time coding in are not CPU bound.

You just asked "why not just keep the bulk of the code as Parrot" - and speed (for those where it is an actual, rather than an imagined, issue) is one reason.

In reply to Re^4: {Perl6} Macros and native compilation by adrianh
in thread {Perl6} Macros and native compilation by spurperl

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.