Runtime Function Redefinition in Programming: Perl's Dynamic Capabilities vs. Go's Static Nature
By
todsacerdoti
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Summary
The article explores the concept of redefining functions at runtime in programming languages, contrasting Perl's dynamic capabilities with Go's static nature. It discusses how Perl allows functions to be rewritten during execution, enabling techniques like aggressive memoization that can propagate through a codebase. The author reflects on the trade-offs between dynamic flexibility and static safety, using personal experience with Perl to illustrate how runtime function modification can lead to performance improvements at the cost of increased memory usage and reduced dynamism.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledI once wrote a Perl subroutine that would memoize the subroutine that called it.
A well-placed call to aggressively_memoize could back-propagate to the whole codebase, spreading functional purity like a virus.
The resulting program would get faster as it used more memory and became increasingly static.
That was possible because Perl, like many interpreted languages, allows functions to be rewritten at runtime.
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