-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen Travis Pope <stp at limbo.create.ucsb.edu>
To: squeak at cs.uiuc.edu <squeak at cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: Wednesday, September 02, 1998 9:55 AM
Subject: Re: Scientific Computing


>
>Let's not forget the Smalltalk-to-C translator in Squeak. In fact, this is
>the perfect medium between performance and malleability. High-level
>algorithms for any domain can be debugged in Smalltalk and then translated
>and batch compiled (and optimized) by your favorite C compiler. This is
>preferable to optimizing single floating-point math operations.
>
>There are examples of this in John Maloney's sound synthesis classes and in
>the FFT class. I'm working on a bunch more for Siren; it's great! (and it's
>something that Java just can't do!)


I had the impression that the Smalltalk-to-C translator in Squeak is limited
in terms of the breadth of possible Smalltalk functions that it can
translate.  That is, it does a great job of translating the essential Squeak
VM into C, but was never intended for much more than that.  I thought I
would have to write extensions in C in order to get that kind of performance
improvement in any kind of app-specific code.  Can anyone identify what the
practical limits are to this translation facility?  (I posted the same
question awhile back, but got no responses).

Thanks,

Kyle Pierce