This talk will focus on the research directions and approaches we pursued while developing GraalVM that ultimately didn’t work out. We’ll highlight the challenges we faced and the lessons learned along the way. Additionally, we’ll discuss the hardest problems we continue to tackle and the obstacles that remain unsolved. This look at our failures will show how they shaped our ongoing work and strategy.

Thomas Wuerthinger is a Vice President at Oracle Labs and the GraalVM founder and project lead. Previously, he worked on the Crankshaft optimizing compiler of V8 at Google, and the Maxine research virtual machine at Sun Microsystems. He received a PhD degree from JKU Linz for his research about dynamic code evolution.