> -----Original Message-----
> From: Scott A Crosby [mailto:crosby at qwes.math.cmu.edu]
> Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2002 1:31 AM
> To: David Simmons
> Subject: RE: Iterators? (Was: Squeak practical use? ...)
> 
> On Wed, 30 Jan 2002, David Simmons wrote:
> 
> > Hi All,
> >
> > I note that this thread is discussion performance of iterators in
> > Smalltalk. The SmallScript (Smalltalk iteration) based code is
pretty
> > darn performance competitive with C++ code. SmallScript provides
> > hi-performance blocks and related jit services are available for
> > eliminating range checks on array bounds that are known, etc.
> >
> 
> Interesting.. I'd never head of it. The websearches for AOS don't find
> much. It looks very very cool.. Got any references for how it works?
> 

The AOS Platform architecture has evolved through 4 generations since
its first implementation in 1991 for QKS SmalltalkAgents (QKS Smalltalk
+ IDE). The original whitepaper and its full feature specifications were
available in the documentation for QKS Smalltalk. It was and probably
still is considered to have been a major Smalltalk milestone offering
many features that are still not present in most Smalltalks today (a
decade later).

The design used in AOS v4, which supports the SmallScript language was
built from the ground up (scratch) in 1999 based on my experience in
building the three previous versions. Aside from SmallScript, other
languages being developed for AOS v4 platform include VB/VBScript, and
Scheme, with preliminary exploration work having been done for Python
and JavaScript.

If you search for "SmallScript" or "AOS Smalltalk" on google, for
example, you will get 8-10 pages of hits. SmallScript is a new language
superset of Smalltalk that you can download from www.smallscript.org. It
is being developed for Win32, MacOSX, Linux-X86, and .NET; the Win32
technology preview version is available now at the download site.

There is an extensive amount of discussion material available across the
following newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk, comp.lang.ruby, comp.object,
comp.lang.smallscript [and various advocacy groups]. Search for
SmallScript rather than AOS.

P.S., There are quite a few people on the Squeak list who were users of
the Mac version SmalltalkAgents and have some sense of its feature
set/capabilities in v1 and v2. (including Alan Kay, Ted Kaehler, Bob
Arning, etc). QKS closed its Smalltalk business operations in 1998, and
SmalltalkAgents is no longer available.

-- Dave S. [SmallScript LLC]

SmallScript for the AOS & .NET Platforms
David.Simmons at SmallScript.com | http://www.smallscript.org

> I can make some guesses from the feature comparison chart.
> 
> Got any implementation notes, or references in the research? How are
you
> getting native threading?
> 
> Scott
>