Scripting in .NET

[MichaelL@...]

Here's a blog from someone who's developing a scripting language in .NET:

      http://www.smallscript.org/Downloads/SSharp_NET_Notes.asp

He's compiling his language in .NET, he isn't interpreting it from a
.NET-based program. Here are some excerpts:
                                                                            
 The simple and direct answer is that I have been waiting to release S#.NET 
 for a very long time and I wanted to initial release to withstand the      
 inevitable problems without being dismissed. I was unhappy with the        
 performance issues of Microsoft's .NET Jitter for use in hi-performance    
 dynamic dispatching scenarios ? the how and why of this are much deeper    
 discussion. I chose to incorporate my own scaled-back-jitter [borrowing it 
 from S#.AOS] for x86 code within .NET. I was also deeply perturbed by what 
 I considered flawed design constraints in DotNet that I had been putting   
 up with to get the job done, which eventually I decided to aggressively    
 circumvent ? a decision which has made me mentally much happier but was    
 the other contributing action that has resulted in this release delay.     
                                                                            


...
                                                                            
 I simply could not stand the performance, the extra hoops, the             
 combinatoric explosion of pre-computed classes and methods I had to        
 generate, or the x86 code the .NET IL jitter was generating for the        
 revised/compromise mechanism. I bit the bullet and started to take         
 seriously the idea of dropping in my own jitter and re-doing the           
 architecture. It was a very late date in the game to be going back into    
 R&D mode ? but the pain/anguish of the work and performance numbers was    
 killing me.                                                                
                                                                            

...
                                                                            
 Even better, my new .NET dispatchers were acceptably close to the          
 performance of my own AOS.IL jitters in S#.AOS. Translated, this means     
 that it is now faster than any interpreted Smalltalk, and within a couple  
 of cycles [of AOS performance] on a per dispatch decisions point basis.    
 The difference between S#.NET dynamic dispatch/call performance C#.NET     
 static dispatch performance is very reasonable [roughly within 6-15        
 cycles] per call. It could be directly cycle-for-cycle competitive if my   
 S#.AOS jitter mechanisms were incorporated into Microsoft's .NET jitters.