On 5/24/07, Alan Kay <alan.kay at squeakland.org> wrote:
> Hi Ralph --
>
> I don't think either Ungar's architecture or the criticism of it
> below address the most important issues of making VHL object-oriented
> computer hardware (both then and now).

I would be interested in knowing what issues you think are the most important.

The thesis is Ungar's, but the architecture is not.  I think the
architecture was a group project by Patterson's students.

The point of the thesis is that a lot of proposed hardware features
don't help performance very much, and in fact there are software
solutions that are more effective.  This is a good point.  However, it
doesn't mean that no hardware features can help.  Moreover, it assumes
that hardware is expensive and software is cheap, and in fact the
opposite is true.  People have been working on a JIT compiler for
Squeak for some time, and we aren't using one yet.  It is easy to say
"just put it in the compiler", but it might be too complex to ever get
the compiler working.

What do you think are the main issues?

-Ralph Johnson