Lars Bak is a virtual machine master. He and team have created a Javascript VM, V8, that takes Javascript syntax and produces optimized machine code directly. The result is very performant execution of Javascript. How does V8 work, exactly? What are the basic design decisions that have gone into it's construction? Why is it designed the way it is? How fast can Javascript really run, anyway? How challenging is it to take a language like Javascript and produce highly optimized machine code?

Erik Meijer, language designer and fundamentalist functional high priest, discusses these questions and more with Lars. We also talk about the language to machine code translation versus having an intermediate step (like IL) that gets optimized further in runtime context by a JITer.

If you want to know the thinking behind the thinking of Javascript compilation, the current state of the art and future directions, then this is for you. Big thanks to Lars Bak for spending time with Channel 9!

Enjoy!