In the first part we built a very basic stack-based machine and we introduced the concept of subroutines in the second part. Halt and catch fire Granting the name to a highly enjoyable TV series, the fictive halt and catch fire instruction is too geeky not to include in our

In the previous part of this series, we looked at implementing a very basic stack-based virtual machine in Elixir. At the end of it we began to ponder the concept of functions. But a return instruction does more than just returning a value. It also continues program execution at the

During my ElixirConf talk I compared and contrasted register-based virtual machines, like the BEAM, to stack-based virtual machines, like the JVM. In doing so, I went through a disassembled Java method that adds its two arguments and doubles the sum before returning it. I also mentioned how comparably easy it