Building a Java Virtual Machine Part 3: Following instructions

Part 3 of a series discussing the joys and pitfalls (mostly pitfalls) of hacking together a minimal JVM in Javascript. The live code base — a very rough work in progress! — is on GitHub. Subscribe for further updates! ;-)

OK, in the last installment I set myself up to get the bytecode for my Java Hello World main method. All that I have to do now is execute it! (easy.) In this episode, I will start to parse “by hand” the instructions for the method, so we can see how some basic concepts work in order to make sure we’re…