Hi!

Dan Ingalls wrote:

> Some questions are:
> 
> 	Would the system benefit from being cast into StrongTalk?
> 		and how much work would this be?

Yes.  A powerful type system is definitely something very useful.  Most 
statically types languages have type system which are too restrictive, 
but languages like SML or Cecil show who type system can (and IMHO 
should) look like.

So, I'd really get the benefits of a(n optional) type system, namely 
better documentation of the system and a better test whether all that 
components and code snippest will probably fit together.

I only looked into Animorphic ST for a couple of minutes so far, but by 
first impression was, this is how Smalltalk should look like.  Besides 
the system system, I like the Self-like browers.  I'll go through the 
tutorial to learn more about the system.

There's another aspect of a statically typed lanuage that wasn't 
mentioned yet and which eventually made me to like developing in Java - 
more than in Smalltalk, to be honest:  Tool support.

I *love* the Eclipse Java IDE.  Only Java's static type system makes 
code completion, the (to some extent) safe refactorings and exact 
browsing of senders and implementors possible.

All these kinds of things are very important if you have to work with 
complex frameworks and/or other people's code, often poorly written, and 
need to get a good understanding of what it does, and what not.

In Smalltalk (without types) no tool can exactly know the type of an 
expression and code completion (with is IMHO the best productivity tool 
of a modern IDE) cannot offer a valid selection of applicable method names.

Currently, I'm working with a very large (VisualAge Smalltalk project 
which was grown over the last five years or so - and most original 
developers left the company long ago - and it's awful difficult, I want 
Eclipse (and Java) back.   Never thought, that I'd say that but if 
mediocre programmers hack quick fixes into a system for a couple of 
years, Smalltalk becomes a mess.  This is probably true for other 
languages, too, but at least types would give you some kind of 
documentation.  They also provide some help for refactoring - there're 
of course no unit tests so you better don't change what you don't 
understand because you cannot break a system which is in use by more 
than 500 in-house customers.

I found it much easier to get my way through the Eclipse Java source code.

> 	Would anyone care if it ran 10 times faster?

Yes.

> 		and how much work would this be?

I got the impression that the Animorphic ST VM was the base for Java's 
Hotspot VM.  If any VM reaches the 1.4.1 Hotspot performance, I'd be 
more than happy.  Even if the Animorphic VM sources are not available, I 
think, you can get the Java VM sources.  There's also an open source 
research VM from IBM which could perhaps used to "borrow" ideas.

> 	Would it be fun to do?

I'd consider it fun :-)

bye
-- 
Stefan Matthias Aust   //
www.3plus4software.de // Inter Deum Et Diabolum Semper Musica Est