[squeak-dev] My own Squeak direction

Jecel Assumpcao Jr jecel at merlintec.com
Mon Nov 16 13:57:17 UTC 2009


Juan Vuletich wrote:
> Jecel Assumpcao Jr wrote:
> > Juan Vuletich wrote:
> > [single, world-wide image for Squeak]
> 
> I wonder what do you have in mind as typical uses for this 
> functionality.

Right - it was silly of me to go into some technical details of how I
hope to achieve my goals without explaining first what these goals are:

I want it to be easy and elegant to create and share persistent objects
using Squeak.

Solutions like Monticello+package universes/squeakmap are a bit too
complicated for me and yet don't do some things that I want.
Deltastreams would improve that somewhat. Keith's scripts solve some
problems by automating stuff at the cost of making manual other things
that I would like to be automatic. I find Spoon very interesting though
I don't think it will scale to the level I want. The Squeakland and
Scratch use projects to share, but that isn't very robust since these
have very strict requirements about the environment into which they can
be loaded without be explicit about what these requirements are.

> While I applaud efforts on modernizing Smalltalk, I'm a 
> bit reluctant of changes to the language semantics.

Though I have no problems with cleaning up Smalltalk's semantics (as
should be obvious from my participation in the Self community), I did
not include any such changes in my vision for Squeak. In fact, I also
participate in the ANSI Smalltalk effort which would bring Squeak closer
to the other Smalltalks rather than make even more different than it
already is. I don't think changing how images are saved and loaded has
any effect on the language semantics though it might change how you use
it (just like adding virtual memory doesn't change C, but might allow a
different programming style).

> > [16 thousand SiliconSqueak cores]
> 
> Wow! Experimenting with such a system would be fantastic!

There are a few steps before we get there. I'll keep the community
informed of any progress we make.

-- Jecel




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