Hi folks!

(personal reflection follows)

There has been a lot of talk recently on this list regarding Strongtalk
and how we could possibly benefit by that work in the Squeak community.
Personally, having tracked Bryce's work on Exupery since he started, I
think Exupery is *much* more interesting and especially much more
realistic:

- It is written *in* Squeak. This is a biggie.

- It is written *for* Squeak. Bryce is one of *us*, it is being designed
and tailored for Squeak use in Squeak projects by Squeakers. Don't
underestimate this factor.

- It works *today* in Squeak (even if we want it to be even faster). Not
vapour.

- Since it is an "offline" compiler it can go even further (than
Strongtalk or a JIT) performance wise.

- It integrates and interoperates with the current VM. This is probably
crucial for large scale adoption in the community. 

Then we also have Ian's work on Pepsi/idst etc which is very
interesting, but in a much longer time perspective. That work is also
being done with Squeak "in the back of his head" - which of course makes
it much more likely to benefit the Squeak community if it gets
completed. It could then offer us an alternative lower level platform
(replacing the VM essentially).

So while I also think Strongtalk is "cool stuff" (but it has been around
for ages) I actually don't think it will end up having much practical
"impact" on Squeak. But I am happily proven wrong.

My money (for a jump in low level performance) is on Exupery and
Idst/Pepsi - and in general I think we should be starting to take
Exupery into our long term planning since it is now becoming a real
practical option. Sure, send speed is still not super duper - but when
it goes up I bet people will start paying real attention.

regards, Göran