D vs. C#

[Dave]

"David Brown" <dlang at davidb.org> wrote in message 
news:mailman.497.1193030905.16939.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
> On Sun, Oct 21, 2007 at 11:21:37PM -0500, Dave wrote:
>
>> Runtime reflection aside, I can't think of anything a VM can do that a 
>> static compiler couldn't with the possible (but largely unproven) 
>> exception of sometimes generating better code because of access to 
>> runtime info.
>
> I believe most already do this kind of analysis.  I'm not sure it helps,
> since there is plenty of other overhead to using a VM, so it probably just
> makes the VM use less costly.
>

What I meant by 'largely unproven' is that when truly runtime-only info. 
(like machine load) is taken into account, it is hard to prove that using it 
to generate different machine code actually makes a difference but IIRC I've 
seen claims to that effect.

For the more reproducable kind of runtime info. (like model of x86 CPU), one 
static compiler that can compile binaries to make use of that is Intel. It 
has a switch that will compile several sets of code and will run "the best" 
set depending on the chip.

> David