I agree with what you wrote, but just to clear up two points:

Yanni Chiu wrote:
> One possible advantage of the C++ based VM is that porting to
> other platforms is a matter of compiling C++, instead of writing
> a code generator. But, then the end result would depend somewhat
> on the quality of the C++ compiler optimizations. Exupery would
> be much closer to the bare metal. I'm assuming that the StrongtalkVM
> does not manipulate native machine code directly, so I may be
> mistaken here.

Strongtalk is like Self in that it has a code generator. Of course, now
that even Apple uses the x86 porting it to other processors is certainly
less of a priority. But if it needs to be done you can bet it would take
less time for a code generator written in Smalltalk than one written in
C++ (just ask the Self/Klein guys who did it both ways).
 
> However, the strong typing aspects may be worth porting,
> if the additional type information can be used to speed up
> execution somehow.

It has no effect on performance at all, but is still interesting for
other reasons.

-- Jecel