Pycket: an implementation of Racket in RPython
Spenser Bauman
Abstract
While object-oriented languages often make use of advanced just-in-time compilers for fast execution, functional languages typically rely on ahead of time compilers. Currently, there are no good JIT compilers for the Scheme family of languages, despite their successful application to other dynamic languages. In this talk, I will present Pycket; an implementation of Racket in RPython which makes use of the meta-tracing JIT infrastructure used by the Pypy project. The goal of Pycket is to provide a fast Racket implementation which can elide the overhead of traditionally difficult features like continuations, multiple return values, and Racket’s contract system.