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#php#phc#ahead-of-timecompilation

Compiling and Optimizing Scripting Languages

Google TechTalks

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  • Recommended by 1 person: 1 on Hacker News.
  • Presented by Paul Biggar, Trinity College, Dublin
  • An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.

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20K views17 years ago1 recommendation

Programming languagesSystems programmingCompilers and interpretersPerformance and optimizationLanguage design and type systems

Paul Biggar discusses the challenges of compiling PHP and explains why ahead-of-time compilation can compete with JIT compilers.

Google Tech Talks March 18, 2009 ABSTRACT Presented by Paul Biggar, Department of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College, Dublin. Scripting languages offer unique challenges to compiler writers. Challenges to compilation include undefined and changing language semantics, and run-time code generation. However, optimizing compilers face greater challenges still. Scripting languages offer many run-time features which are difficult to optimize, including run-time typing, run-time aliasing, run-time class and function definitions and run-time code generation. I discuss these problems, and a great number of their solutions, in relation to phc (phpcompiler.org), our optimizing ahead-of-time compiler for PHP.

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1 person recommends this

What people say. Recommended for its insights into the challenges of ahead-of-time compilation for dynamic scripting languages like PHP.

sgroveon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Nectar: A Native JavaScript Compiler Inspired by Crystal Lang and Nim Lang”

There's actually a not-too-terrible talk going over some of the challenges of compiling PHP, and how initial promising gains turn out to be very difficult (as OP said) to maintain as you try to encompass the full language. Some great examples of disappointments and challenges! link to this video
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nickikon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Facebook releases HHVM, 60 percent faster than its current PHP interpreter”

…wer in these threads (on reddit too). For JIT fans I recomend online-stalking of Mike Pall, here on Hacker News and on reddit. Well I think if you have a task like that a team should look into what other people where doing. Self, LuaJit, parrot, some smalltalk systems, strongtalk where all allready done or on the way in 2008. In a talk about phc ( link to this video ) Paul Biggar talk about why AOT might be better then JIT. His reasoning was that the suffer from bad startup times and php is a language where the comon uscase are scripts that only run a short time. Anyway the static compiler certantly wasn't a bad way to get some speed fast. Getting some type in there is probebly the best thing you can d…
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agumonkeyon Hacker News • Mentions

On “PHP gets Generators”

I meant mine obviously ;) For the curious, here's the talk (1 hour) about ahead of time compilation of PHP: link to this video
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ookon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Why Dark didn't choose Rust”

link - "Design and implementation of an ahead-of-time compiler for PHP" is the PhD thesis in question. A google tech talk related to this work is on youtube link to this video You can find multiple other papers on google scholar where Paul was an author all related to programming languages, compilers etc.
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