Squeakers, Squeakians, Squeakites, and Squeakods,
Allow me to mark the end of 2008 by sharing with you a little story and a wish list for 2010. [and before anyone asks, yes I have free time and will help] Also allow me to admit that I am a bad Squeak user, in that I abuse the hell out of the system. I come from a school of programming that believes only in the reality of the machine itself, and often feel that computer scientists should never be allowed near a computer, let alone allowed to program one. :)
That said, last month I was playing around with prototyping an application in Squeak, in a fumbly experimental way, poking around in dark corners most people never bother with. And it struck me that most of the problems that I was having, that Craig Latta tries to address in Spoon, and that causes forks like Pharo, all stem from a fundamental misconception Squeakers have about how their environment should work. And much of the issue stems from my favorite whipping boy, the Smalltalk system dictionary object.
Oh how I love to abuse that object! I just love "polluting" the global namespace of my images with all sorts of often used objects and doodads. Take your favorite object and just jam it in there, and poof! You can start inserting it all over the place, and like magick you stop having to pass along useless arguments. If you play this game long enough, you quickly get to a place were few if any selectors actually take any arguments!
And classes, now there's where you can have real fun. I like writting methods that programatically generate classes, and then mutate them based upon real world results. Why use a variable that stays largely static for long periods of time, when you can just recompile the method on the off chance it changes? Need a one of a kind one off object? Just abuse the entire notion of class, and make a classy-object and pop it in Smalltalk for good measure.
Let's look at the style of some the code that I've been writing:
myMethod := 'someObject someMethod' compile. myClass addMethod: myMethod named: #goDoSomething. myObject := myClass clone. myObject addMethod: 'someOtherPrototype doSomethingElse' compile name: #goDoSomething.
And as you can see, I'm doing some pretty nasty stuff. I've extended ByteString and ByteArray to invoke the compiler on their contents and produce CompiledMethods, and then wrapped a bit of Behavior's stuff and stuck it in Object because I feel the distinction between classes and objects are counter productive.
So why in the world would someone start smashing apart the whole Smalltalk OO world by abusing globals, dumping classes, and start writing self-modifying code in Smalltalk? Well partially because we should be able to, but more importantly because Smalltalk code should be able to. If you're writing Smalltalk that writes Smalltalk, development processes that serve a human well, do not necessarily serve a program well. Especially, when to that software bits are bits, and has no real understanding of a distinction between source, code, and data.
The experiences and experiments that I've been conducting over the past year, all seem to point to some fundamental weaknesses in the overall system architecture:
1.) Primatives can not be added to the VM on the fly, by just assembling some code and running it.
2.) The global namespace (aka Smalltalk) is static, but not hyper-static (where in all top level name changes only affect code going forward)
3.) Class and Trait names are global variables. (which is doubly a problem when you consider #2)
4.) Objects and processes all live within one space, but are often unreasonably hard to reference (anonymous)
5.) The operation of one conceptually distinct group of objects (say an application), can easily interfere with the operating of a second conceptually distinct group of object (say the system).
6.) It is difficult / impossible to share a single object, between two distinct implementations of the system, without resorting to simulating the system within itself (which is itself a simulation of the system within itself).
Now I admit, these weaknesses may seem a bit odd or even objectionable, and many system level squeakers are going to claim that if you look at the system from a different perspective they may not even exist. But from my POV, what this boils down to is:
1.) I can't test new hardware in a running squeak image 2.) I can't load and unload applications, without affecting the underlying system 3.) I can't load and unload multiple versions of a "module" without substantial hackery 4.) I can't run 2 of the same process at once, and be sure that they don't affect eachother's internal state 5.) I can't extend the interface procedurally, without risking breaking my debugger! 6.) I can't test multiple versions of my code base against the same set of live objects!
The project that I'm working on does involved embedded systems, robotics, AI, and evolutionary programming. Most of the road blocks I've run into in Squeak, are a product of what is clearly early design trade offs made by people who never imagined one would want to do half the things I'd like to do with their toy. These problems, however, also effect every other developer out there who is trying to write more conventional applications.
What I really want is a way to treat ImageSegments as their own physically distinct machine, with their own attached Process list and Smalltalk. The top level Smalltalk System Dictionary, would not be a global dictionary, but a hyper-static dictionary, like the Forth dictionary or the ML top level namespace, where you can multiply redefine globals in effect producing multiple contexts within that global space (hence order of loading mattering). And then, I'd like it if these ImageSegments using either their out pointers mechanism or something else could reference eachother's objects, and send each other messages, but with some ability to easily name those out pointers in the local context. Finally, I'd really love it if the VM had a simple primative that simply let you invoked to content of any ByteArray as native code. (This would also have the interesting side effect that you could eventually rewrite the entire low level VM entirely in live objects inside Squeak using Squeak, dumping Slang).
Obviously, I'm not saying Squeak sucks, or that the problems require rewriting Squeak in its entirety. I think the problem is one of familiarity. We as programmers are far too familiar with the warts in our system, and stop looking at them for what they are. Right now, Squeak is a lot like DOS. You can do one thing at a time, and every project requires a whole new application. What we need is a Squeak that is a lot more like a Mach microkernel, capable of keeping lots of balls in the air at once, and easily extensible in "user space".
Anywhoo, that's my two last cents for 2008.
Best wishes for 2009,
Dave