[Vm-dev] Pony for Pharo VM

[ken.dickey at whidbey.com]

Not to discourage people, but I have not seen cases where a "strong" 
type system would be able to scale for _real_ Smalltalk applications.

As an example, we are comfortable with something close to "high school 
math".

"Rational numbers"
(1/2) + (1/3) + (1/6). "--> 1 "

"Complex numbers"
[ :n | n * n] value: (-4 sqrt). "--> -4 "

"BigNums"
111 factorial. " -->  
1762952551090244663872161047107075788761409536026565516041574063347346955087248316436555574598462315773196047662837978913145847497199871623320096254145331200000000000000000000000000 
"

Just this is hugely complex to model in a "type safe" language.

Add metaprogramming (e.g. #doesNotUnderstand:), source level debugging 
of live stacks and GC of large object spaces and you have a very large 
(space) and very slow (interlocking cache granularity) interpreter.

Please prove me wrong.

$0.02,
-KenD