[News] Fwd: Re: Common Smalltalk VM Summit

[Klaus D. Witzel]

Hi Giovanni,

on Wed, 15 Nov 2006 22:59:25 +0100, you wrote:

> I completly lost that news and I'd like to
> interview someone...perhaps you?

No, better interview Gilad Bracha. Some questions arise naturally out of  
his post

-  
http://groups.google.com/group/strongtalk-general/browse_thread/thread/27acebc398a6db53

- what's the big difference between Strongtalk VM and Java VM
- how could all these OO VMs (incl. the other ones he mentions) become one  
excellent base with specialization according to the respective language's  
needs
- will his Invokedynamic operator revolutionize the static arena by  
allowing dynamic types
- is hotswapping necessary for production or for development or both

- more is possible, but the above already makes a long one, IMO

> I am away this week but I will be back at Monday night

And I'm moving abroad Thursday morning 07:00 (that's today :) ...

> so...if you have some throughts please share it with the news mailing  
> list and then we can set up a couple of questions for Ingalls too ;)

Yes please, ask Dan after the interview with Gilad.

/Klaus

>
> On 15/nov/06, at 13:09, Klaus D. Witzel wrote:
>
>> Hi list,
>>
>> looks like there's not the hoped-for response and enthusiasm for  
>> defining an unofficial Smalltalk-2007 specification as a base for all  
>> the Smalltalk(-ish) VM's.
>>
>> But perhaps it's too early to say such (hopefully).
>>
>> Nevertheless, it may be worth a headline, "Unofficial Smalltalk-2007  
>> specification?" :)
>>
>> /Klaus
>>
>> ---- Forwarded Usenet-message ----
>> From: "Alex Perez" <aperez at alexperez.com>
>> Newsgroups: gmane.comp.lang.smalltalk.exupery
>> Subject: Re: Common Smalltalk VM Summit
>> Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 12:00:02 +0100
>> URL: news://<455AF332.8080200@alexperez.com>
>>
>> David Griswold wrote:
>>> Hi everybody,
>>>  Dan Ingalls and I have been talking, trying to figure out what to do  
>>> about
>>> the major opportunity offered by the recent release of the Strongtalk
>>> virtual machine as open source.
>>
>> It seems you've come up with an excellent plan of attack, and I'm glad
>> to see people really trying to make this happen. I had the thought
>> independently less than a week ago, after evaluating a dozen Smalltalk
>> VM's for a potential commercial project.
>>
>>>  Rather than keep this discussion to ourselves, our thinking was that  
>>> this
>>> would be the perfect time to call a kind of summit, with  
>>> representatives of
>>> all the major Smalltalk implementations, both open-source and  
>>> commercial.
>>> The topic: what if we could build a shared high-performance open-source
>>> platform suitable for hosting a number of different Smalltalk systems,  
>>> one
>>> that we can all share and work on together?
>>
>> It sounds like a worthy goal, and I'm surprised nobody else has
>> responded to this message. This sounds like a great first step, although
>> I had also had the thought that *maybe* it would be possible to get an
>> unofficial Smalltalk-2007 specification, which would be a very clear
>> unofficial (but community-supported, since all interested parties would
>> have a stake and hand in writing the specification) revision to the
>> de-facto Smalltalk-80 standard and/or ANSI Smalltalk standard.
>>
>>>  While the details of the type-feedback techniques used in the  
>>> Strongtalk VM
>>> are arcane, the benefits are not: *much* higher performance for general
>>> Smalltalk code.  Dan, myself, and many others who know about type- 
>>> feedback
>>> and the pioneering Self system, have been dreaming for many years  
>>> about the
>>> possibility that someday this technology might make it into mainstream
>>> Smalltalk VMs.  It would take Smalltalk performance to a whole new  
>>> level.
>>
>> Which I'd love to see. On a somewhat-related but tangential note, has
>> anybody done any experimental porting of Exupery to ARM (ARM11,
>> specifically) CPUs?
>>
>>>  That someday is here now, if the different factions within the  
>>> Smalltalk
>>> community can pull together a little bit so that we don't miss this
>>> opportunity.
>>
>> As a developer interested in using Smalltalk in a commercial product,
>> this would be greatly beneficial to not only myself, but surely many
>> others as well.
>>
>>>  There may be debate within the community about some aspects of the
>>> Strongtalk project, for example the type system, but we should all be  
>>> able
>>> to agree on the simple idea that a whole lot more performance would be  
>>> a
>>> Good Thing.  Now a huge performance gift has suddenly shown up on our
>>> doorstep.
>>>  The last thing Smalltalk needs is another incompatible  
>>> implementation.  The
>>> splintering of Smalltalk implementations has dispersed the huge amount  
>>> of
>>> talent and effort needed to build, port, maintain, and extend a really  
>>> good
>>> virtual-machine.  Alone, this is a problem for each of us.  Together, a
>>> really good, super-fast type-feedback VM is for the first time within  
>>> reach.
>>
>> Agreed! And the BSD license is quite permissive and flexible, to boot.
>>>  I would like to invite the smart people out there who know and care  
>>> most
>>> about the various Smalltalk virtual machines, to join Dan and I in a  
>>> fairly
>>> focused discussion about this starting tomorrow (Thursday, PST) on the
>>> Strongtalk discussion group, at
>>> http://groups.google.com/group/strongtalk-general.  I will be out of  
>>> the
>>> country for 6 weeks starting Wed the 11th, so I would like to propose  
>>> that
>>> we try to go back and forth about this a few times by the end of  
>>> Friday, so
>>> we can think about this over the weekend, and maybe come up with a  
>>> proposed
>>> general course of action by the middle of next week, so we all have
>>> something to think about until my return.
>>
>> I'm looking forward to it.
>>>  Let's not lose this opportunity.
>>>  Cheers,
>>> Dave
>>
>>
>>
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>