While I was working on optimizing the Python runtime (internally, at a FAANG company), an unexpected resource that I learnt a ton from was the SmallTalk Blue Bo

While I was working on optimizing the Python runtime (internally, at a FAANG company), an unexpected resource that I learnt a ton from was the SmallTalk Blue Book[1]. A lot of the lessons learnt from implementing Smalltalk and Self runtimes in resource constrained computing environments available back in the 70s and 80s are still very relevant today. One of my former colleagues from that team used to often joke about how the Self[2] team was effectively cheating with hidden classes and inline caching in the late 80s, because they had workstations with 64 megs of RAM whilst almost everyone else had to contend with a megabyte or less of RAM. [1]: http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/BlueBook/Bluebook.pdf http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/BlueBook/Bluebook.... [2]: http://bibliography.selflanguage.org/_static/self-power.pdf http://bibliography.selflanguage.org/_static/self-power.pdf