Complexity and starting over on the JVM (was Re: Traits or not...)

Paul D. Fernhout pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com
Mon Feb 4 22:44:38 UTC 2008


As I said in my post: "Yes I know there have been a few Java/JVM Smalltalks
(including at least two or three derived from Squeak). But maybe one with a
clearer license might help to push beyond that continuing contentious
issue." I also brought up up other technology issues related to complexity
and rebuilding from scratch.

As impressive as it was for Dan Ingalls to make that version of Squeak, and
then Pavel to decompile the result into source, so what? What is the license
of it all (either origins or decompiled version)? How well factored is it?
Does it have nay hope to be supported by a community? Does it take advantage
of the Java/JVM platform, including threading and multi-processor support?
Or interoperate easily back and forth with Java libraries like Jython can?

Also, that version is (to my understanding) defining its own objects, not
using Java/JVM's objects, so there is a performances hit as well as other
layers of complexity and interoperability issues (the reason I included that
dispatching code example in Java, which is a different approach than the
usual Squeak VM) I think there might be overall benefits from using Java/JVM
objects but with a Squeak-like dispatching system for Squeak defined code
that was not compiled down to native code (like via translation to
Scala/JVM). Still, using Java/JVM objects is just one possible aspect of
such a system, and not essential to the value of such a thing (it makes
"become:" and proxying harder, while it makes other things much easier).

To me, that example just shows again everything wrong with the Squeak
development process and why it is so frustrating to deal with it -- an
undocumented decompiled hack stands in for "free"-ly-licensed modular robust
software -- and eclipses the possibility of something better. :-)
Squeak's great success is its own worst enemy in that respect. :-)

Other comments by me on Smalltalk on the JVM here:
  http://www.mail-archive.com/help-smalltalk@gnu.org/msg00796.html
  http://www.mail-archive.com/help-smalltalk@gnu.org/msg00803.html
(although now I am leaning to Scala as an intermediate language above the
JVM instead of Kawa).

--Paul Fernhout

Klaus D. Witzel wrote:
> It *is* running on that VM, even has source code,
> http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2007-July/118649.html



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