4 ms·

They were better than Smalltalk, not in terms of the language, but in terms of availability to developers. C++ and Java were free, Smalltalk during the time it

They were better than Smalltalk, not in terms of the language, but in terms of availability to developers. C++ and Java were free, Smalltalk during the time it could have risen, had no free implementations and cost a fortune to use. It's still a better language than either of those, but lost network effects gained by Java by being free.

stcredzero 10y ago
They were better than Smalltalk, not in terms of the language, but in terms of availability to developers...Smalltalk during the time it could have risen, had no free implementations and cost a fortune to use. There were literally per-seat licenses at $5000 and $10000 at one point. There were free implementations around the time when Java was new, like GNU Smalltalk, but it would have been better if those hadn't existed, because they didn't convey the benefits at all. LightTable had YouTube to enable people seeing the benefit of the environment. Smalltalk could have really used that at the right time. That still wouldn't have helped, because the Smalltalk community didn't understand the network-effect benefits to the same degree almost any programmer understands them today. Smalltalk could have been Java. Sun actually approached the owners of the VM to ask if they could use it for their early set top box project. They were rebuffed and went on to write what was to become the JVM. (Smalltalk becoming Java might well have resulted in huge early Internet security disasters blamed on it, because of the difficulty in securing the system, and the preference developers had for code signing as the primary security mechanism.)
- goatlover 10y ago
  Self was developed at Sun as a prototypal alternative to Smalltalk, which involved a lot of work on the compiler to make it performant. I'm pretty sure that effort fed into the JVM.
  - igouy 10y ago
    fyi http://www.strongtalk.org/ http://www.strongtalk.org/
    - jecel 10y ago
      Self started life as Smalltalk-86 at Xerox Parc in a collaboration with Stanford, and then got implemented at Stanford before moving to Sun Labs. When Self was killed at Sun (the first time in 1994) part of the group joined forces with the "Smalltalk with Types" group to implement StrongTalk. Meanwhile the part of the Self group still at Sun created Pep, which was a Java on top of Self that was way faster than any other Java. But it was a quick hack with a few serious limitations. Animorphic, the StrongTalk company, did a more polished implementation of Java on top of their VM technology and got bought by Sun to turn that into the HotSpot VM working together with the part of the Self group that had stayed at Sun all along. Around 2000 Sun allowed the Self project to be restarted until they killed it again in 2006, at which time they open sourced StrongTalk (which had been hidden since Animorphic had been bought).
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    I'm pretty sure that effort fed into the JVM. It did. Much later than the introduction of the JVM, however.

stcredzero 10y ago

They were better than Smalltalk, not in terms of the language, but in terms of availability to developers...Smalltalk during the time it could have risen, had no free implementations and cost a fortune to use. There were literally per-seat licenses at $5000 and $10000 at one point. There were free implementations around the time when Java was new, like GNU Smalltalk, but it would have been better if those hadn't existed, because they didn't convey the benefits at all. LightTable had YouTube to enable people seeing the benefit of the environment. Smalltalk could have really used that at the right time. That still wouldn't have helped, because the Smalltalk community didn't understand the network-effect benefits to the same degree almost any programmer understands them today. Smalltalk could have been Java. Sun actually approached the owners of the VM to ask if they could use it for their early set top box project. They were rebuffed and went on to write what was to become the JVM. (Smalltalk becoming Java might well have resulted in huge early Internet security disasters blamed on it, because of the difficulty in securing the system, and the preference developers had for code signing as the primary security mechanism.)

goatlover 10y ago
Self was developed at Sun as a prototypal alternative to Smalltalk, which involved a lot of work on the compiler to make it performant. I'm pretty sure that effort fed into the JVM.
- igouy 10y ago
  fyi http://www.strongtalk.org/ http://www.strongtalk.org/
  - jecel 10y ago
    Self started life as Smalltalk-86 at Xerox Parc in a collaboration with Stanford, and then got implemented at Stanford before moving to Sun Labs. When Self was killed at Sun (the first time in 1994) part of the group joined forces with the "Smalltalk with Types" group to implement StrongTalk. Meanwhile the part of the Self group still at Sun created Pep, which was a Java on top of Self that was way faster than any other Java. But it was a quick hack with a few serious limitations. Animorphic, the StrongTalk company, did a more polished implementation of Java on top of their VM technology and got bought by Sun to turn that into the HotSpot VM working together with the part of the Self group that had stayed at Sun all along. Around 2000 Sun allowed the Self project to be restarted until they killed it again in 2006, at which time they open sourced StrongTalk (which had been hidden since Animorphic had been bought).
- stcredzero 10y ago
  I'm pretty sure that effort fed into the JVM. It did. Much later than the introduction of the JVM, however.