To both of my readers: I hope you had a great time during the holidays, and that you feel re-energized and ready to take on the world. I crossed the threshold of 2024 with some much needed extra family time, some rest from work, and most importantly, by cooking up some cool new stuff for mcjs! (I know, I promised I would put out a new post every 2 weeks, but you know how it goes....
In the last year or so, I’ve been working on mcjs, a Modest Compiler for JavaScript: a toy (hence the modesty) implementation of a JavaScript VM including both an interpreter and a tracing JIT compiler, with an internal design inspired (loosely) by LuaJIT. It’s still far from any sort of completion but it’s a very enjoyable learning activity nonetheless. This blog exists because this little side project has now accrued enough “history” that it seemed like a good idea to write down and collect some notes, if only for myself to remember why I made a certain choice or another....