On 31 Jul 2002, Scott A Crosby wrote:
Hello...
I'm back after about 2 months. (moving sucks)
Have I missed any messages that would be relevant to my earlier work? (fulltext index, new method cache, V4, Identity*** fixups)?
You could say that. While you were gone, we held a vote and a period of to allow comments on the issue of getting rid of the Smalltalk in Squeak, and going to Java. Don't worry, Morphic will still be there, but you'll have to access it with Java. We did use your V4 work, though, so I'm sure it'll be very familiar.
We renamed Squeak to Jo-Jo, so now we have the usual group running Jo-Jo-Central. A month ago, SqC was purchased by Sun. The lot of them. Some people here seem to think that the switch from Smalltalk to Java has something to do with the buyout, but I find it unlikely. It was odd, but when we had the call for votes and comments, there was an overwhelming response *for* Java, from a lot of people I've never seen on this list. Funny thing is, replies to their emails bounced. Nothing suspicious there, I suppose.
The Jo-Jo deviates a bit from standard Java, noteworthy differences include:
1. No automagic garbage collection. Must call System.IO.memory.GC.fullGC(); or System.IO.memory.GC.singleGenerationGC(); whenever a GC seems appropriate.
2. No Swing, for now. Jo-JoC plans to migrate to all GUI stuff to Swing within the next year, though.
3. Weak typing. Like C pointers.
4. Operator Overloading (WOW!)
5. A lot more that everyone will tell you. Keep your eyes open, a lot of work is going on on this front, and there will be a swiki up soon!
Regards, Aaron