On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 10:49:18AM -0700, Dan Ingalls wrote:
The first component in this gestalt is that I think type annotations are useful as documentation, and I have always felt (and often said) that a Smalltalk with optional types would be an ideal computing environment. It really fills a hole in the metasystem.
After pondering this, as well as Dave Simmons' subsequent summary of SmallScript features, I'd love to play around with this. I'm trying to find a few spare hours to play with SmallScript.
The second component is a sort of BOBW (best of both worlds) notion that with the cool aspects of Squeak and its numerous multimedia facilities, together with what is arguably the fastest execution engine going, we could at least have a lot of fun.
Great fun! (picture me with an ear-to-ear smile :-)
The third component has to do with applying the Squeak philosophy to what otherwise appears to me as a daunting project.
<etc.>
I'm glad that it is no longer daunting to you :-) It does make it seem much more manageable.
Some questions are:
Would the system benefit from being cast into StrongTalk?
Yes! Definitely from a performance perspective. I'm not qualified to comment on the merits of the type system, other then to say that it sounds intriguing.
and how much work would this be?
(drawn blank)
Would anyone care if it ran 10 times faster?
Yes!
and how much work would this be?
(drawn blank)
Would it be fun to do?
If "do" is interpreted literally, then it does sound fun, but I don't have the large amount of time that it would require for me to usefully contribute. However, if I loosely understand "do" to mean "play with it after it's done", then then my answer is unequivocally affirmative.
Joshua
Comments?
- Dan
PS Nathanael: Could you forward this to Gilad? I don't have his email addr, but I'd like to hear his comments (which I or you could forward to the list). Also, David, I'm hoping you will answer with your thoughts.