IronSmalltalk

[Steve Wart]

One of the reasons I was interested in IronRuby is that I was hoping to see
an image-based model for Ruby (after looking at what GemStone are doing with
MagLev). http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/04/maglev-gemstone-builds-ruby

I think one of the things about Smalltalk that can be difficult for people
is the minimal syntax. Ruby goes in the opposite direction. People seem to
like to learn syntax if it means they don't need to learn a class library to
do simple things. Unfortunately it also means there are a lot of different
idioms. I like Smalltalk's ability to decompile bytecodes and rename the
instance variables and essentially go back to the original source code. It's
not really possible to do that with many other languages, but I can see why
most people might not think that's a killer feature.

Also one of the things that bugs me about the dynamic languages discussion
is that most people equate dynamic to scripting, and I find that really
limited.

I would love to see an image-based model for the DLR. In fact it seems .NET
already has this with application domains but there must be more we would
need to do to bring the ideas together. I believe that what's holding back
.NET from providing better support for this model is Visual Studio -- the
old IDE model is not really necessary anymore if the tools were more savvy.

I started looking at SmaCC, which is brilliant and easy to use. The
Smalltalk syntax is there already, and I think it would be a logical
starting point for a DLR Smalltalk.

I imagine it wouldn't be hard to pull out the scripting dependencies; in
fact they're probably useful. I just don't think that should be an essential
part of the DLR.

Do you have any more info about the DLR? All I have seen is some old entries
on Jim Hugunin's blog and the IronRuby source code.

Steve

2008/5/6 Gary Short <gary at garyshort.org>:

>  Hi Steve,
>
>
>
> I'm not sure about the image based environment to be honest. Speaking to
> devs who looked at Smalltalk and never took it up, one of the reasons why
> was they could never get their heads around the image based development. Is
> this an opportunity to move away from that and help get Smalltalk back into
> the mainstream? Maybe.
>
>
>
> *From:* uksmalltalk-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:
> uksmalltalk-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org] *On Behalf Of *Steve Wart
> *Sent:* 06 May 2008 20:45
>
> *To:* UK Smalltalk events
> *Subject:* Re: IronSmalltalk
>
>
>
> I had a look at the IronRuby code and it seemed to depend on the MS
> Scripting libraries. Is the DLR suited for an image-based environment?
>
> 2008/5/6 Gary Short <gary at garyshort.org>:
>
> Hi,
>
>
>
> Yes I did. As far as I can see, this is written against the CLR itself and
> not the DLR. I'm just back from the MVP summit in Seattle and I was speaking
> to the DLR guys out there and they are not aware of a project for Smalltalk
> to target the DLR and would be interested in one.
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Gary
>
>
>
> *From:* uksmalltalk-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:
> uksmalltalk-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org] *On Behalf Of *Steve Wart
> *Sent:* 06 May 2008 20:22
> *To:* UK Smalltalk events
> *Subject:* Re: IronSmalltalk
>
>
>
> Have you looked at what John Brant and Don Roberts did with #Smalltalk?
>
> On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 8:20 PM, Gary Short <gary at garyshort.org> wrote:
>
> Any Smalltalkers on this list interested in a project to port Smalltalk to
> the Dynamic Language Runtime? If so, ping me back an email.
>
> --
> Gary short
> http://www.garyshort.org
> http://www.twitter.com/garyshort
> MVP C#
>
>
>
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