Emberson, Mark Alexander Hugh2014-07-202014-07-201995http://hdl.handle.net/10092/9377http://dx.doi.org/10.26021/3391Traditionally, dynamically-typed languages have been difficult to compile efficiently. This thesis explores dynamic compilation, a recently developed technique for compiling dynamically-typed languages. A dynamic compiler compiles and optimizes programs as they execute, using information collected from the running program to perform optimizations that are impossible to perform in a conventional batch compiler. To explore these techniques we developed SKI, a dynamic compiler for Scheme. Tests on programs compiled by SKI, have shown that dynamic compilation techniques can give a substantial increase in the performance Scheme programs. In some cases they can increase performance by up to 400%.enCopyright Mark Alexander Hugh EmbersonTheses / Dissertations