Why aren't these Disney Python jobs for Squeak?

Lex Spoon lex at cc.gatech.edu
Mon Sep 25 23:47:51 UTC 2000


merlyn at stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz) wrote:
> >>>>> "Paul" == Paul Fernhout <pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> writes:
> 
> Paul> Obviously, Squeak has things that Python+C doesn't have
> 
> And vice versa.  Until this works:
> 
>     halfdome.holdit.com>> cd /tmp/merlyn-squeak-play/
>     halfdome.holdit.com>> ls
>     Squeak2.8.changes  Squeak2.8.image    SqueakV2.sources
>     halfdome.holdit.com>> squeak -headless
> 

Hmm, something is wrong in the latest Unix VM.  It's just a sign that
nobody is using this, though.


> 
> I can't imagine a CGI "script" written in Squeak no matter how well
> the design would be... the startup cost of launching a new image is
> probably too high.  Of course, they say that about Perl all the time,
> so the point is not to startup a new image - witness Comanche et. al.
> 

On the contrary, loading a memory dump is about as fast a boot process
imaginable.  As is, without any optimization whatsoever, I just loaded
and ran a 1-line Squeak script in .91 seconds.  That's already
reasonable for many applications, and it will get much much better if
anyone bothers to work on Squeak's boot sequence.


Still, I honestly find it hard to care much about this exact scenario. 
First, I personally like to work from Squeak better than emacs, bash,
Windows explorer, or anything else I've tried, and so my natural
inclination is to call programs from Squeak, not vice versa.  Second,
even if I were to develop a command-line Squeak program, I would still
take the approach of using the GUI and growing a custom image.  Yes, it
takes up disk space.  A few megabytes of disk space really isn't a big
deal on most computers, though.  Certainly it's not a big enough deal to
dump Squeak's tools and go back to chiselling stone with vi.

Now, this is not to say that everyone can just go out and start writing
Unix utilities in Squeak, because first you have to load David Lewis's
OSProcess.  Seriously, there will surely be walls that people bump into,
but the first few are much milder than they may appear.


-Lex





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