Interesting, but I feel there is simply a big difference in project risk
between basing new work on a VM like the JVM that has been under development
for ten or fifteen years and has tons of software for it versus basing a
project on alpha software which doesn't do anything that much different. Of
course, people will now feel free to quote that back to me for anything *I*
do (including a Smalltalk/JVM. :-) Which is why new ideas have at best a few
lukewarm friends and many staunch enemies (Machiavelli?).

Also, there are a lot less users and developers for the GNUStep platform
(even if we include Mac OS X developers, although there are slight
differences).  Still, I have on-and-off considered GNUStep. Lots of good
things about it. It never really clicked for me, despite multiple tries over
many years. And even if GNUStep runs on "windows, mac, and linux", I wonder
(from previous reading on it) how *well* it runs on those platforms. So for
me, the JVM still makes a lot more sense. If this Smalltalk/JVM continues to
proceed at a slow pace, then when the software you link to has been around
for a year or two, then I might more strongly consider it. For me, I know a
lot about Java software libraries and that ecosystem (including Jython), but
I know very little about GNUStep libraries. I know the JVM works fairly well
by now even if it still has problems here and there. If I was a GNUStep
developer, with a good knowledge of GNUStep libraries, then maybe I'd want
to invest my time in that direction. Same if I was a mono developer.

Ideally, a future Squeak might evolve to such a high level of abstraction
that it could retarget itself for multiple such platforms -- jvm, mono,
GNUstep, Lazarus, plain old GNU/Linux+GTK, or bare to the metal.  But it
sure seems easier at first for me with limited time and resources to just
pick one widely used platform which runs on mac, PC, GNU/Linux (like the
JVM) and leverage it. Of course, then it's not clear if the incremental
value of a more dynamic language like Smalltalk over, say, Jython, is worth
the effort. Still, a lot of new things get made because they are interesting
and fun or for other personal reasons, not that they are always the best
investment. :-)

--Paul Fernhout

Damien Pollet wrote:
> On 05/02/2008, Paul D. Fernhout <pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:
>> pile of sticks since C code can be so brittle. Objective-C is an improvement
>> in that regard.
> 
> Since you bring the subject, the GNUstep project recently announced a
> new Objective-C runtime:
> - announcement https://mail.gna.org/public/etoile-discuss/2007-11/msg00001.html
> - code http://svn.gna.org/svn/etoile/branches/libobjc_tr/
> 
> The runtime was designed with flexibility in mind (not unlike COLA),
> and the object model is based on prototypes, so compiling Smalltalk
> for this runtime would be really simple. Also the GNUstep libraries
> (UI in particular) run on windows, mac, and linux.