https://dr-knz.net/abstract-machine-models.html
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Abstract Machine Models - Also: what Rust got particularly right · dr knz @ work
Ever since 2010, I have studied the “meta” of software, by studying (and thinking about) the continued dialogue between programming language designers, computer designers, and programmers. The following constitutes a snapshot of my current thinking. Epistemological context During the period 2008-2012, I was requested to help design&build programming tools …
Very interesting and great summary down to the core aspects.
I co-invented a couple of things around reconfigurable computing in the mid-90s. Our idea was to layout the alogrithms/data processing on a grid of ALUs that can signal state (like a petri-net) and see this ALU grid is a sliding window over the code (which is actually a graph).
All the hardware building-blocks today make it mostly impossible to really optimize from an abstract level. One can check this by looking at the code different compilers generate.
Which implies, that if you really want to get something optimized, you need to hand-craft it to a very specific context (=hardware). The economical answer to this is: We don't do that, we just make the metal go faster and moving the inefficient code to the level of *good enough in most cases",