This 1989 paper presents compiler optimization techniques for the dynamically-typed object-oriented language SELF, extracting static type information from declaration-free programs by compiling type-specialized copies of procedures with runtime type tests as fallbacks. Combined with compile-time message lookup, aggressive inlining, and traditional optimizations, the approach doubled the performance of dynamically-typed OOP languages.
Background
SELF was a prototype-based object-oriented programming language developed at Stanford Research Institute in the 1980s, influential in the design of languages like JavaScript. This work was part of early research into making dynamically-typed languages competitive with statically-typed ones.
- Source
- Lobsters
- Published
- Oct 4, 2026 at 04:59 AM
- Score
- 6.0 / 10