

Storage strategies for collections in dynamically typed languages - gkuan
http://tratt.net/laurie/research/pubs/html/bolz_diekmann_tratt__storage_strategies_for_collections_in_dynamically_typed_languages/

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StefanKarpinski
Interesting stuff. Unfortunately, this paper conflates dynamic typing with not
being able to express anything about the types of values:

> An implicit effect of dynamic typing is that every variable, object slot,
> and so on, can reference objects of arbitrary types.

This is simply untrue. It _happens_ to be true in Python and many other
dynamic languages, but it by no means necessary. Dylan and Julia, for example,
are both dynamically typed, yet let the programmer express that variables,
fields, and collections will only contain certain types of values. That
ability eliminates this whole class of problems – which tend to be the hardest
problems when trying to optimized dynamic languages. If you don't have a nice
type system, of course, then this kind of cleverness is absolutely necessary
to get better performance. V8 in particular does this sort of thing amazingly
well.

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hannibal5
Some Lisp or Smalltalk guru steps in and says that they already did that in
80's in 7, 6, 5, 4, ...

