Making JIT Code Easier
Check out Nanojit – this is a cross-platform, cross-target JIT compiler. Given a set of abstract instructions and an appropriate back end, you can go from your abstract syntax tree to callable code in short order.
How fast can you implement a compiler? Depends on your source language, but given a decent parser/scanner generator (say ANTLR), it’s a short trip to an AST. Given an AST, it’s a short trip to LIR, the pseudo assembly language used for Nanojit.
I’m disappointed in the the type system being so basic, but in that regard it is very similar to C—.
Here’s a small sample using nanojit written by Chris Double. Nifty.