How does Parrot compare to other virtual machines?

Question

Parrot is the virtual machine originally designed for Perl 6.

What technical capabilities does the Parrot VM offer that competing virtual machines such as the Java Virtu

Answer 1

I don't know JVM and CLR enough, but my tips:

• dynamic languages (closures, polymorphic scalars, continuations, co-routines) support (speed)
• dynamic method dispatch,
• first class functions,
• first-class continuations,
• parameters (optional, named, ..),
• register based
• has HLL interoperability provided at an assembly level
• range of platforms

Update: This is probably irrelevant as JVM is one of Rakudo Perl 6 backends nowadays. See Rakudo Perl 6 on the JVM (Perl 6 Advent calendar 2013, Day 3).