4 ms·

Henry Baker's archive of research papers

14 points by anonjon 17y ago

cwan 17y ago
For those of us who didn't know who this is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Baker_%28computer_scientist%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Baker_%28computer_scienti...
gjm11 17y ago
Particularly recommended (meaning only that I found them particularly interesting when I first saw them): http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/NoMotionGC.html http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/NoMotionGC.html (realtime garbage collection) http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/Prag-Parse.html http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/Prag-Parse.html (META parsing) http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/LazyAlloc.html http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/LazyAlloc.html ("CONS should not cons its arguments", a way of doing automatic memory management without giving up most of the benefits of stack allocation) http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/CheneyMTA.html http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/CheneyMTA.html (compiling Scheme into weird C whose function calls never return) http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/Subtypep.html http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/Subtypep.html (efficient type inference using bit vectors; see also TInference.html) http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/ForthStack.html http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/ForthStack.html (the relationship between "linear logic" (where a value can only be used once) and stack machines; Baker wrote several papers about "linear" programming; this stuff never really went anywhere, but it's interesting to think about) And, not at all a research paper, but I thought it was very funny: http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/sigplannotices/gigo-1997-04.html http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/sigplannotices/gigo-1997-0... (snarky satirical criticism of Ada).
anonjon 17y ago
I posted this because I was reading a quote of Paul Grahm, essentially saying that HLL's require less skill to implement your ideas in. I was reminded of all of the research and work I did trying to learn to write lisp code that runs reasonably fast. The point being that writing fast code in a HLL like lisp requires knowledge about the different techniques that are being used by your compiler to make your code efficient. Anyway, this archive is definitely one of the better endpoints that I ran into on that search. My personal favorites are Cheney on the MTA and the paper about a lisp architecture based entirely on destructive operations.

14 points by anonjon 17y ago

cwan 17y ago

For those of us who didn't know who this is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Baker_%28computer_scientist%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Baker_%28computer_scienti...

gjm11 17y ago

Particularly recommended (meaning only that I found them particularly interesting when I first saw them): http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/NoMotionGC.html http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/NoMotionGC.html (realtime garbage collection) http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/Prag-Parse.html http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/Prag-Parse.html (META parsing) http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/LazyAlloc.html http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/LazyAlloc.html ("CONS should not cons its arguments", a way of doing automatic memory management without giving up most of the benefits of stack allocation) http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/CheneyMTA.html http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/CheneyMTA.html (compiling Scheme into weird C whose function calls never return) http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/Subtypep.html http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/Subtypep.html (efficient type inference using bit vectors; see also TInference.html) http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/ForthStack.html http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/ForthStack.html (the relationship between "linear logic" (where a value can only be used once) and stack machines; Baker wrote several papers about "linear" programming; this stuff never really went anywhere, but it's interesting to think about) And, not at all a research paper, but I thought it was very funny: http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/sigplannotices/gigo-1997-04.html http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/sigplannotices/gigo-1997-0... (snarky satirical criticism of Ada).

anonjon 17y ago

I posted this because I was reading a quote of Paul Grahm, essentially saying that HLL's require less skill to implement your ideas in. I was reminded of all of the research and work I did trying to learn to write lisp code that runs reasonably fast. The point being that writing fast code in a HLL like lisp requires knowledge about the different techniques that are being used by your compiler to make your code efficient. Anyway, this archive is definitely one of the better endpoints that I ran into on that search. My personal favorites are Cheney on the MTA and the paper about a lisp architecture based entirely on destructive operations.