Optimizing a Simple AST-Walking Interpreter for Competitive Performance
By
pizlonator
Kettled twice. Extra chewy, extra trustworthy.
Summary
This article details the process of optimizing a simple AST-walking interpreter for a dynamic programming language called Zef, created as a personal project. The author explains how to make this basic interpreter competitive with established languages like Lua, QuickJS, and CPython through various optimization techniques, focusing on foundational improvements rather than advanced JIT compilation or garbage collection tuning typically discussed in mature runtime optimization.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledThis post is about optimizing an extremely simple AST-walking interpreter for a dynamic language called Zef that I created for fun to the point where it is competitive with the likes of Lua, QuickJS, and CPython.
Most of what gets written about making language implementations fast focuses on the work you'd do when you already have a stable foundation, like writing yet another JIT (just in time) compiler or fine tuning an already pretty good garbage collector.
This post is different. It's about the case of optimizing from the ground up, starting with a very basic interpreter.
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