Tim Rowledge wrote:

> I would like to propose a fairly complete overhaul of CompiledMethod  
> and its friends. Get rid of the hybrid object format (which would  
> simplify the gc code a little too) and define CMs as
> bytecodes
> literals
> sourceaccess
> methodClass
> ...whatever other properties are needed...

Self has been exactly like this since 1990 and it works great! Makes
more sense for people learning it too.

Since I am currently working on a 16 bit Smalltalk I can tell you that
ugly hacks like the current CompiledMethod format are absolutely
necessary when you are limited to 32K objects. I am doing things that
are far worse. But on a 32 bit system there is zero excuse for this kind
of thing (there are small performance losses here and there in the VM
but the overall results is an actual speed up) and it is a pity that the
16 bit b/w ==> 32 bit color transition wasn't used to clean things up
(though understandable given the requirement of the smallest possible
footprint).

-- Jecel