[MacRuby-devel] [MacRuby] #528: Improve Tail Call Elimination

[Jordan K. Hubbard]

I have to say - Trac seems to be a rather bad way of having architectural discussions.  I've been having a hard time even understanding who says what for the last 2-3 rounds of comments.  Wouldn't this be a better sort of discussion to have on the -devel mailing list, then distilling the action items (if any) into the Trac bug?

Just a thought...  Happy New Year everyone!

- Jordan

On Dec 31, 2009, at 8:23 PM, MacRuby wrote:

> #528: Improve Tail Call Elimination
> -------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
> Reporter:  haruki.zaemon@…          |       Owner:  lsansonetti@…                         
>     Type:  enhancement              |      Status:  new                                   
> Priority:  minor                    |   Milestone:                                        
> Component:  MacRuby                  |    Keywords:  tail call elimination optimisation tco
> -------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
> 
> Comment(by haruki.zaemon@…):
> 
> Replying to [comment:7 conradwt@…]:
>> If you need tail call optimization, then you're definitely concerned
> about the wasteful calls because the goal of tail call optimization is to
> transform
>> recursive alogithm into iterative algorithm.
> 
> The aim of TCO is to allow recursive algorithms to perform within a
> constrained stack frame. Whether you choose to implement this as re-
> writing the algorithm iteratively or instead throwing away the stack frame
> is a choice.
> 
>> I guess that you're looking for something  automatically done with
> MacRuby VM.
> 
> I don't mind if it's explicit :)
> 
>> It's still your requirement to implement the appropriate traversal
> algorithm for the data set that you're operating on.  In short, one should
> use the best algorithm for the job and not rely so heavily on what's
> happening within the language's internals.
> 
> And I have, twice: once recursively; then again iteratively actually make
> it perform. The former being MUCH simpler, the latter being horribly
> complex.
> 
> I I'm not accusing MacRuby of being flawed, I'm merely suggesting that, as
> per the links posted, OO algorithms and data structures can be greatly
> improved by languages that support TCO. Yes, it's possible to write
> complex algorithms without TCO; it's also much easier to write them with
> it.
> 
> -- 
> Ticket URL: <http://www.macruby.org/trac/ticket/528#comment:9>
> MacRuby <http://macruby.org/>
> 
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