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Comment by DonbunEf7 | Hacker News Reader

"Not that the Futamura projections can be used with erlscp yet, but, you know, just in case that day ever comes. A man can dream."

I feel like this is the lament of every compiler author.

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Did you know that there is a new Java compiler that can do the first Futamura projection? https://github.com/graalvm/graal/tree/master/compiler

Graal and Truffle are cool. It's unfortunate that it's in Java, mostly because I don't trust Oracle to do the right thing with the community and I expect them to change licenses to make business opportunities for Substrate VM licensing.

Even without SubstrateVM, Graal is a big step forward IMO in terms of interop and performance for the JVM. And Graal/Truffle are under the GPLv3, and only need JDK9 JVMCI interfaces, so I think it's mostly in the clear at this point... They can change the license, but they can't take away the code that's already open.

That said: I agree it seems extremely likely at this point that Oracle is going to milk Substrate for enterprise money, and that's a shame because it is a really important component of the system, in my opinion. And not having it will be a big drag for people who are considering Truffle/Graal.

Isn't Oracle giving leadership of Java over to the open source community (i.e. to Apache or Elcipse )

As such, what's concerns still exist?

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3217347/java/oracle-doesnt-...

When first read about partial evaluation, I misread Futamura as "Futurama". Maybe my brain was trying to tell me something...

Yes, and then I found this wiki page about the topic and I still am confused: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_evaluation

Can anybody explain like I'm 5?

Not like you're five, but if you're interested: the standard introduction is still 'Partial Evaluation and Program generation', which is freely available http://www.itu.dk/~sestoft/pebook/pebook.html

Here's the simplest code I could come up with for 'dynamic' partial evaluation, showing interpreter->compiler but not the higher projections: http://wry.me/~darius/writings/peval/

Dan Piponi has a nice introduction to Futamura's projections in his blog: http://blog.sigfpe.com/2009/05/three-projections-of-doctor-f...

I think it's trying to tell you you really like Futurama.

Same here. Started wondering what episode was being discussed.

Obviously the first Tales of Interest episode, where the Professor uses the What-If machine to find out what would have happened if he had invented the Finglonger.

The Futamura projections are such a cool result of partial evaluation! Thanks for pointing it out, otherwise I would not have known about them.

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