SAPO Codebits 2009

Session Title

Dynamic Language VMs: Inside Ruby

Abstract

The only efficient way to make the most of something is understanding it's mechanics - a pilot has deep knowledge of many scientific factors and its effects on a plane. Why do so many developers fly blind?

We'll take a peek into the Ruby 1.9 VM's internals with DTrace and observe the effect of some core components on memory, IO and CPU subsystems. No prior knowledge of Virtual Machines/Interpreters is assumed.

Interpreter specific subjects touched upon:

* Source to runtime : Loading files, parsing to Nodes and eval
* VM : Symbol table, method cache, frames, method dispatch and optimizations
* Object model : Core types, Modules and variables
* Closures : Blocks and procedures
* POSIX, IO and Contexts : Signals, system calls and Thread / Fiber switches
* Garbage Collection : Heap space, alloc / dealloc and GC patterns

These are in no way a complete subset of a functional VM, but appropriate for the time slot of this presentation. If time allows I'll touch upon a dreamy evented interpreter design from a coworker, based on the Event Sourcing pattern, and how such a design yields a decoupled and pluggable interpreter.

Language

English

Speakers

Lourens Naudé

Lourens is an independent Consultant currently based in sunny Madeira Island, but originally from South Africa. With a twisted (and mostly non-academic) view on automated behavior based performance optimizations and deep service integration experience, he's currently building out Forex/sell side infrastructure in Ruby. He has written several Ruby extensions and is also a founding member of the Scrooge DB optimization layer. (more)