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Calculator Community => Other Calc-Related Projects and Ideas => Topic started by: harold on July 24, 2011, 12:01:05 pm

Title: JIT-compiled languages on the TI?
Post by: harold on July 24, 2011, 12:01:05 pm
What do you all think, should it be done?
I see some good and bad things about it, for example
good: faster than basic, smaller than asm, almost no code size limit (could be run from archive and non-executable ram)
bad: it will take a year before a program starts even with lots of lazy loading, requires the 'runtime' to be installed (embedding it in the program would negate pretty much all benefits), hard to debug code generation bugs
Title: Re: JIT-compiled languages on the TI?
Post by: Munchor on July 24, 2011, 12:07:17 pm
You mean something like Java Bytecode? Or make our own bytecode? I think it's doable, but not sure of how it would work out.
Title: Re: JIT-compiled languages on the TI?
Post by: harold on July 24, 2011, 12:14:44 pm
Probably something simpler than that (no classes but just raw code (maybe methods), only 16 and 8 bit integers, no IEEE floats, etc)
But yea I'm wondering more about whether any JIT compiling should be done on the TI at all, do you recon the pro's outweigh the con's?
Title: Re: JIT-compiled languages on the TI?
Post by: Ti-Programmer on July 24, 2011, 12:21:18 pm
I don't think its worth it, cause that would be sorta like BBC Basic, or whatever its called.
You have one Huge app that integrates functions that could be done with some persistence in asm.
It'll slow down the program, maybe not the time to compile.
If you program in VB.net and compare that to C++ on speed issues, C++ wins every time, except maybe the time to compile.
Thats my opinion. Feel free to disagree.
Title: Re: JIT-compiled languages on the TI?
Post by: harold on July 24, 2011, 12:56:59 pm
That's true, all things being equal, compiled is always going to be faster.
Title: Re: JIT-compiled languages on the TI?
Post by: Munchor on July 24, 2011, 01:10:59 pm
It's going to be faster, we all know that. But it's doable, right? I think that's his point.
Title: Re: JIT-compiled languages on the TI?
Post by: Lionel Debroux on July 24, 2011, 01:27:15 pm
* Possible ? Hard on the register-starved Z80, easier on the 68000, and clearly doable on ARM: the Zero/Shark JVM and LuaJIT have ARM backends.
* Worth the trouble ? Probably not on the old Z80 and 68000 :)
Title: Re: JIT-compiled languages on the TI?
Post by: ZippyDee on July 24, 2011, 01:31:04 pm
I'd say it's definitely possible for it to be done, but I would also question whether it's actually worth the trouble. If it really is worth it, then it would be pretty interesting to see what could come out of this!
Title: Re: JIT-compiled languages on the TI?
Post by: SirCmpwn on July 24, 2011, 01:50:32 pm
I think that a JIT language would be a bad idea on such a restricted platform.  However, languages that are traditionally JIT compiled could probably be pre-compiled for this specific platform.
Title: Re: JIT-compiled languages on the TI?
Post by: TIfanx1999 on July 24, 2011, 02:34:57 pm
* Possible ? Hard on the register-starved Z80, easier on the 68000, and clearly doable on ARM: the Zero/Shark JVM and LuaJIT have ARM backends.
* Worth the trouble ? Probably not on the old Z80 and 68000 :)

I think Lionel pretty much sums up my opinions on the subject nicely. :)