bytecode unification for scripting languages

[Michael Vanier <mvanier@bbb.caltech.edu>]

There's an interesting thread on the python-dev mailing list:

    http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-July/016406.html

which talks about developing a common bytecode interpreter for scripting
languages including perl, python, ruby etc.  If this ever comes to pass, I
would hope that the plt-scheme developers would consider supporting this as
well (sort of a .NET CLR concept applied to scripting languages).  Is there
anything fundamental about scheme that would preclude such an approach?  I
know that both python and perl support lexical closures now, and at least
one implementation of python (stackless python) also supports
continuations, so my guess would be no.  A unified bytecode could be an
enormous win for everyone; imagine being able to seamlessly use libraries
for other scripting languages from within DrScheme, for instance.

Any thoughts on this?

Mike