Ryan Davis wrote:
> 
> On Dec 2, 2007, at 09:57 , Charles Oliver Nutter wrote:
> 
>> Exposing call frames, scoping constructs, and so on prevents any 
>> implementation from minimizing or optimizing frames away.
> 
> That's simply not true. Look at self, smalltalk, and many lisps for 
> counter-examples.

Perhaps you could provide links to a concrete example showing those 
languages performing better than those that don't expose frames? Or 
demonstrate to me how user-level frame objects could be exposed in Ruby 
without a performance hit? Last time I checked, none of those languages 
were Ruby, and none were the fastest languages around. Faster than Ruby 
isn't the point, many things are faster than Ruby. But always-present 
frame objects will absolutely introduce overhead that wouldn't be there 
without them or if an optimizer has freedom to remove or omit them.

- Charlie