Re: Wiki Up

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "tim Rowledge" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2007 9:15 PM
Subject: Re: Wiki Up


>
>
> On 3-May-07, at 9:05 PM, Cafe Alpha wrote:
>
> > "It would seem to me that the bytecodes and primitives could be
> > made compatible with the Strongtalk VM, but you'd lose the
> > loveliness of writing the VM in Smalltalk."
> >
> > I don't think there's any loveliness to Squeak's VM having been
> > written in Smalltalk.  It was a simple hack that was worth very
> > little.  Basically they worked out a very very limited subset of
> > Smalltalk that has C semantics and can be translated to C with a
> > very simple script.  And they did this only because they liked the
> > Smalltalk environment for debugging.
> I claim you are very wrong here. There are several other virtues to
> having the VM mostly written in Smalltalk; first being that you don't
> have to put up with C. C is a poorly done attempt at a poshed up
> assembler and I fear that it's pervasive baleful influence has held
> back the wold of software by decades. Next, one can run the Squeak VM
> in Squesk not just to debug it but to simulate and instrument it.
> Trivial example - I made the changes to implement a new non-hybrid
> CompiledMethod format, wrote a SystemTracer, created an image, ran it
> in simulation, found optimisations and fixed a bug all without having
> to suffer C.
>
>

I thought all we were talking about is whatever glue you need to get the
Strongtalk VM working on Squeak.  Glue only.

If Strongtalk is extended so that the VM knows about types, enforces them
(and unboxes and optimizes them), and thus you have an efficient FFI, what
good would Slang be?


> > Now we have good debuggers for C++ and it makes more sense to write
> > in C++, debug in C++ and thus have much more powerful language to
> > base the code in.
> Yuck. Blech. Terrible idea. Far better to improve Slang so as to
> never need to go near C again.
>
> tim
> --
> tim Rowledge; [email protected]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
> Fractured Idiom:- AMICUS PURIAE - Platonic friend
>
>
>
> >


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