Strongtalk VM?

[Mark Haniford]

On 10/16/06, Brian Rice <water at tunes.org> wrote:
>
>
>
> Strongtalk has several issues. I'll try to give a quick overview:
> 1) It is not portable at all, designed only for mid-to-late-90s
> Windows on x86 processors. It needs work just to compile with a
> modern MS Visual C++ compiler. The compilation code only deals with
> x86, not just in the dirty details, but in the protocols as well.


    These days, x86 only (as an initial cut) is not as problematic as
Windows only.


2) The compiler is built into the VM instead of above it.
> 3) Not enough people understand the VM mechanics yet that make all of
> this work.


   Not enough time, and not enough technical chops (me included).   At the
time they probably didn't know or care if it was going to go open source,
but I think that C++ tends to obfuscate something like a VM and raise the
barrier to entry.  Straight C probably would have been better for something
like that.  But of course the big hurdle are people that have willing time
and strong VM experience to actually work on it.


>   Are the semantics of Slate to foreign for a Smalltalk VM?
>
> Yes, to a reasonable extent. Smalltalk-80 hackers do enjoy pointing
> out how multi-dispatch and prototypes/delegation can be implemented
> atop their VM's. This is a bit glib, because the overheads are real,
> just as real as if we were to blithely assert that everything that
> Haskell compiles well could certainly be compiled for the Slate VM,
> that PMD gets most of pattern-matching done easily enough. It's true,
> but disingenuous - by using primitives that suit a certain level of
> abstraction, it frees the programmer from the economic burden of
> having to count the cost of that abstraction.
>
> That said, the hotspot-style inlining benefit would be much greater,
> I'm guessing; for the same reasons, since Slate was *created* with
> the economic goal in mind that the Strongtalk developers gave the
> Smalltalk community a glimpsed vision of.


That's what I figured.  You not only would have to have strong knowledge of
the Strongtalk VM, but also of how to adapt it to Slate



>    I noticed that a couple people wanted the Lisp interpreter for
> > Slate.  Does anybody have any specific plans for working on Slate?
>
> Don't expect people to commit to such things publicly in an open-
> source community - it engenders a sense of owing and expectation
> which is discouraging.


I agree.  It would be great if someday someone would just drop a note saying
they have a fast performing Slate compiler/VM.  I think open source in
general tends to have a over-hyping effect.

--
> -Brian
> http://tunes.org/~water/brice.vcf
>
>
>
>
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