[Sablevm-developer] Java Virtual Machine/Scheme Question

[Brent F. <bre...@xp...>]

Per,

After some thought, I eventually gave up on my ill-advised idea of
hacking the back-end of the MzScheme interpreter (VM) to support
Java.  I now believe it is better to go the other way (i.e., a
Scheme implementation in Java), which is of course Kawa.

One thing I've read in a few places (Kaffe list for one) is that
the current JVM architecture is not well-suited for implementing
continuation and closure semantics.  I can't say if this is true
from personal experience, and I wanted to get your thoughts.

The reason for my curiosity is that the Sable JVM (SableVM project
at http://www.sablevm.org) is an implementation of the JVM.  It 
might be possible to include hooks for stack frames or other internal 
constructs to make the coding of "Functional Programming Paradigms" 
easier or the implementation more efficient.

Could you give any comments on your understanding of the JVM's 
shortcomings in this area, and whether or not the availability of
such internal hooks might be helpful?  Is it a non-issue, and the
complaints are really about trivial things?

Thanks,

-Brent