Porting Squeak

Les Tyrrell tyrrell at iserve11.lis.uiuc.edu
Sun Jan 13 17:06:11 UTC 2002


----- Original Message ----- 
From: Noel J. Bergman <noel at devtech.com>
To: <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2002 12:33 PM
Subject: RE: Porting Squeak


> > The [worst] problem of squeak is lack of name spaces, in my own opinon.
> > Speed is not a problem...but costs for developement is.
> 
> There is work underway to improve Squeak's modularity.
> 
> > Smalltalk is easier to use than java, so you get a more productive
> > environment.
> 
> The "odd syntax" and lack of really good tutorials geared to take existing
> C(++)/Pascal/Java programmers (or any programmer for that matter) from
> newbie to mastery is one of the most significant failings.
> 
> A Java on (or to) Squeak techology would help Java programmers to begin to
> explore Squeak while still being productive.

"Java in Smalltalk" has also been tried, though never really given a fair chance in the marketplace.  Frost, Jade, and PocketJava come to mind ( Frost: Java in VisualWorks, Jade: perhaps also in VisualWorks, and PocketSmalltalk: perhaps alongside the PocketSt VM ).   I haven't tried PocketJava, and I believe that Jade was cancelled when it was learned that PPD were going forward with Frost.  But Frost was also later cancelled.  However, Frost was unthawed a few years later.  I had a hand in helping out with that process, and have kept a wiki going at http://sabine.canis.uiuc.edu:8080/Frost for those interested in working on it.

My motivation for that was that we live in a world with an awful lot of Java code out there, and once in a while there is something significant that I'd like to have in my Smalltalk world, but not at the expense of manually re-writing it.  So, I thought it would be good to have a way of using Java applications from within Smalltalk.  However, that is a project for someone with a lot of time, as well as deep knowledge of both Java and VisualWorks.  Unfortunately, these days of those three I only have the knowledge of VisualWorks.

- les






More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list