A Small Scheme VM, Compiler and REPL in 4K
summary
A Scheme system that compiles to a tiny bytecode and runs a REPL with an 850‑byte VM core and a full executable between 4–8 KB depending on chosen runtime library. Implementations in C, JavaScript, Python and Scheme demonstrate portability, C uses a custom stop‑and‑copy GC and tagged integers, and the compiler includes an incremental compiler and dead‑code linking so unreferenced runtime features aren’t bundled. Supports tail calls, first‑class closures, and benchmarks roughly match small Scheme implementations.
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chapters (13)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:18Implementations
- 2:49Virtual Machine
- 4:50How it works
- 6:37Why Scheme
- 7:13Runtime Libraries
- 8:02Ribbit
- 9:43Program Source
- 10:52Garbage Collection
- 11:28Primitives
- 12:00Example
- 13:08Performance
- 14:53Conclusion
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