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Compiling and Optimizing Scripting Languages

Google TechTalks · 20.9K views · 2009-03-28 · 1:01:37

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Overview

Paul Biggar's Google Tech Talk on compiling and optimizing scripting languages, drawn from his work on the phc ahead-of-time PHP compiler. He covers runtime typing, aliasing and code generation challenges, and argues AOT can compete with JIT.

On Hacker News

Cited in PHP compiler and language-implementation discussions as an honest account of the real difficulties of compiling dynamic languages.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2011–2020

Topics

Compilers, interpreters & program analysisPython, Ruby & scripting languages
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phpphcahead-of-time compilationcompiler optimizationdynamic languages

What people said

sgrove · 2016-12 · Recommendation

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! [VIDEO]

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ook · 2020-11 · Reference

[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 [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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agumonkey · 2012-09 · Reference

I meant mine obviously ;) For the curious, here's the talk (1 hour) about ahead of time compilation of PHP: [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Google TechTalks, played through YouTube.

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