The VM Goals -Reply

[John Wood]

>> I think the only compelling proposal would be for a
more-abstract-than-Java VM, <<

The VM I have been discussing features configurable parsing which is flexible 
enough to directly map JVM bytecode onto the optimisation table - in fact, JVM 
bytecode would actually be a set of (contexted) references to the Java 
optimisation table (OT).

One more interesting thing I did not mention - if you deliberately reduce an 
OT reference ignoring the native implementation, you can then reverse engineer 
the resultant code into an OT of a *different* language, and translate one 
language to another quite effectively. Of course, if the languages orientated 
around two diverse models - then the translation would be ineffective.  It 
does help, however, to make the distinctions of one language to another (where 
the differences orientate more around symantics than architecture) less of an 
issue.

John