Just pulling the raw words out of a double means integers often map to hashes with zero low bits. Then when we map that to an entry in the map, all small integers end up in entry zero, leading to tons of collisions. This mixes the bits around some like Java does to fix that. Makes the map_numeric benchmark about 18% faster on my machine. On a contrived benchmark that just uses keys up to 1000, this makes it 52x (yes, *times) faster.
Wren is a small, fast, class-based concurrent scripting language
Think Smalltalk in a Lua-sized package with a dash of Erlang and wrapped up in a familiar, modern syntax.
System.print("Hello, world!")
class Wren {
flyTo(city) {
System.print("Flying to %(city)")
}
}
var adjectives = Fiber.new {
["small", "clean", "fast"].each {|word| Fiber.yield(word) }
}
while (!adjectives.isDone) System.print(adjectives.call())
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Wren is small. The VM implementation is under 4,000 semicolons. You can skim the whole thing in an afternoon. It's small, but not dense. It is readable and lovingly-commented.
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Wren is fast. A fast single-pass compiler to tight bytecode, and a compact object representation help Wren compete with other dynamic languages.
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Wren is class-based. There are lots of scripting languages out there, but many have unusual or non-existent object models. Wren places classes front and center.
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Wren is concurrent. Lightweight fibers are core to the execution model and let you organize your program into an army of communicating coroutines.
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Wren is a scripting language. Wren is intended for embedding in applications. It has no dependencies, a small standard library, and an easy-to-use C API. It compiles cleanly as C99, C++98 or anything later.
If you like the sound of this, let's get started. You can even try it in your browser! Excited? Well, come on and get involved!