On point number 2, the compiler ships with the open source project. It's written in Javascript. It runs in the browser, or on the command line. We are planning

On point number 2, the compiler ships with the open source project. It's written in Javascript. It runs in the browser, or on the command line. We are planning on getting a new compiler in 2010, and it will still do all those things. It will also be more robust, introduce some sorely needed new features, and with any luck be faster to boot. With respect to point one, I'm not sure anyone commenting in this thread really understands the complexity of optimizing application performance in the browser. On an absolute level, message passing is slower than function calling. But taken in context, that's a small percentage of what happens in an application. Cappuccino, because its an application framework, can make certain assumptions to dramatically improve performance. Assumptions that can not be made here and there by individual app developers. For example, coalescing DOM updates and drawing events on the run loop. Combining timers together to minimize overhead. Delegating events from the document level to prevent unnecessary build up of event handlers. On the tools front, we can strip some dead code from projects, automate spriting of all app resources, target different code paths to different browsers automatically, and a slew of other things. Performance is complicated.