undefined | Better HN

0 pointspron10y ago0 comments

> you need to manage the pool. You also could try to implement green threads in JVM, as they are in Erlang, but you would need an entirely new compiler to insert yield points at appropriate places.

I am talking about a new compiler. An Erlang compiler. The JVM is a virtual machine. Erlang is a language. We've already proven you can run Erlang on the JVM quite well, and that was before many pertinent improvements to the JVM and its ecosystem.

0 comments

dozzie10y ago

JVM still lacks some serious functions, namely, links and monitors. I'm not that sure you can emulate those on JVM reliably without implementing them as fundamental operations.

And then, there's still problem of interoperability. Even when you write your code in Erlang@JVM, it still needs to talk to Java code, which doesn't have yield points.

pronOP10y ago

> JVM still lacks some serious functions, namely, links and monitors. I'm not that sure you can emulate those on JVM reliably without implementing them as fundamental operations.

You don't emulate them; you implement them -- just as BEAM does. Having them baked into the runtime serves no purpose. The JVM operates at a much lower level than BEAM -- just as BEAM is implemented in C, it could be implemented in Java, except that the really hard parts (JIT and GC) are already taken care of. Think of Java as C + JIT + GC.

> it still needs to talk to Java code, which doesn't have yield points.

That's not a problem. First, Erlang code talks to C code, which doesn't have yield points, either. Second, the JVM doesn't need to rely on yield points as much as BEAM does, because it is much more kernel-thread-friendly than BEAM.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse