[Vm-dev] Re: [Pharo-dev] Parsing Pharo syntax to C/C++

[stepharo]

Hi Goran


> Also, if we compare the Lua community with the Squeak/Pharo community, 
> it is quite obvious that the lack of really good FFI solutions leads 
> us to "reinvent" stuff over and over, often poorly, while the Lua 
> people simply wrap high quality external libraries and that's it. Done.

With Pharo ***every*** single day we improve the system. We asked 
clement to work since more than a year with Eliot.
If people would understand that we created a consortium so that we can 
put more forces on the VM parts including FFI then it would have an impact.
Now comparing lua that has been designed to interact with C and 
Smalltalk is not really fair but we will get there.

We are attracting smart guys now in the VM because the spirit of the VM 
guys CHANGED. I remember not so long ago Mariano being told to do his 
homework.
And Mariano as well as all the smart guys in our team were shocked. How 
could we expect smart guys to join and help. Now this period is over and 
this is good.
We are already seeing the difference: clement, ronie and other will follow.

I hope that we will be able to edit a book based on clement blogs and 
other information but this is taking time.

RMoD invested in the build and the fact that everybody can compile a VM 
to attract people too.
We proposed to help at the server infrastructure to push commit 
validation and we will see what can be done.


> Every bit of performance makes a big impact for us - but to be honest, 
> what we would value even more than performance would be ... 
> robustness. I mean, *really* robust. As in a freaking ROCK.

This is why I would like to push more regression testing.
Goran do you have a regression system for your deployement?
I wanted to check the work of Jan Vrany that he proposed to us more than 
a year from now.

> Here we do NOT have special 3DICC plugins so no, here we blame Cog or 
> more likely, Socket plugin. Often? No, but "sometimes" is often enough 
> to be a big problem. In fact, a whole new networking layer would make 
> sense to me.
>
For me I found that normal jumping over the dirt catch you after a 
while: this is a law of nature. Now the point is how can we inverse the 
tendency
as we started to do it.

Do you have money to put on the table for that?
Else do you prey enough to see it happening magically :) Noury and luc 
were so fed up with this code that they started to rewrite it and test 
it but they got exhausted after a while. Because testing network layer.
Now these are typical points that we want to discuss within the pharo 
consortium.
Esteban will work on 64 bits port. This is on his official (inria) 
roadmap. But again we will play it with people that want to play it.
1000/2000 Euros to be in the consortium is not even a trip to the US or 
Germany.

Stef