[Squeak-e] Programming the VM

[cg at cdegroot.com]

Mark S. Miller <squeak-e at lists.squeakfoundation.org> said:
>One of the ways Alan conceived of the object paradigm is to make the 
>computer into sort-of a little network of little computers. Little computers 
>are naturally encapsulated combinations of code and data interacting with 
>each other by sending messages.
>
Is this looking at Islands, basically, but then nested? Again the $1000
dollar question arises: by what scope? It seems here that you are
talking about machines, therefore about execution environment, therefore
about some form of dynamic scopery. 

>What can I read about Seaside? Could you summarize the salient points?
>
www.beta4.com/seaside. Basically it keeps the continuation of a web
request around to act on it the next time round. It also puts magic
cookies in web requests so that it can find the correct continuation if
you push 'back' twice, change the form data, and resubmit. Would work
like a charm in this design, only needs its 'children's stacks' to play
with.

>Traits? Summary?
>
A cool blend of multiple-inheritance, mix-ins, and whatnot. Mostly on class
library level, the security impact would be positive if anything because
it allows for a better factoring of code (and therefore capabilities)

You should read the paper(s), http://iamwww.unibe.ch/~scg/Research/Traits/

>>Smalltalk traditionally doesn't have dynamic scoping, but 
>>Stephen Pair could implement it in RuntimeEnvironments.
>
>RuntimeEnvironments?
>
thread-local vars, basically.
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2002-December/049938.html

>It really would be good to have a list of these for current Squeak. Then we 
>can try to work through them and see what stories we find plausible.
>
Reification of context and sends seem to be a very important enabler of
Smalltalk magic. If anything, I don't think we want to lose that. 

-- 
Cees de Groot               http://www.cdegroot.com     <cg at cdegroot.com>
GnuPG 1024D/E0989E8B 0016 F679 F38D 5946 4ECD  1986 F303 937F E098 9E8B
Cogito ergo evigilo