method handles in a nutshell

The JVM prefers to interconnect methods via static reference or dispatch through a class or interface. The Core Reflection API lets programmers work with methods outside these constraints, but only through a simulation layer that imposes extra complexity and execution overhead. This note gives the essential outlines of a design for method handles, a way to name and interconnect methods without regard to method type or placement, and with full type safety and native execution speed. We will do this in three and a half swift movements...[Read More]

Posted by jrose [JVM] ( April 17, 2008 12:24 AM ) Permalink | Comments[3]

serious and funny about side effects

We just had a good conversation in the JVM Languages group about how memory is getting weird these days, and how microbenchmarks have always been weird. Please include in this weblog, by reference, my musings on memory and JVMs.

Kudos to Vladimir Sizikov for a nice collection of follow-up links. I was very glad for the introduction to Ulrich Drepper’s paper. He also refers to a new wiki on Hotspot implementation, inspired by and serving the OpenJDK, in which I and others are collecting information to help language and JVM implementors understand how Hotspot works, how to make it better, and how to byte-compile for performance.

Finally, if like me you’ve heard but never quite believed the story about how functional languages fix all the problems with side effects and you laugh at the funny papers, you’ll like this little fable about the perils of mutability, in programming languages. It provides an arresting, hard-hitting, and ultimately crushing new perspective on Hindley-Milner type checkers.

Posted by jrose [JVM] ( April 09, 2008 02:55 PM ) Permalink | Comments[0]