4 ms·

I think I remember reading at one point that a bunch of the original Strongtalk tech was recycled by Sun Microsystems for the first JVM. A quick DuckDuckGo-ing

I think I remember reading at one point that a bunch of the original Strongtalk tech was recycled by Sun Microsystems for the first JVM. A quick DuckDuckGo-ing yields some plausible confirmatory links such as https://github.com/jirkadanek/Strongtalk https://github.com/jirkadanek/Strongtalk

niftich 9y ago
It wasn't for the first JVM; it was for HotSpot, the JIT engine that replaced [1] Sun's previous JVM in 1999. HotSpot was developed by the same team that worked on Strongtalk [2], including the linked submission's author Bracha, who were later acqui-hired by Sun [2]. See also my previous comments that summarize this and recount the achievements of the rest of the Strongtalk team, who all went on to be significant contributors to various domains [3][4]. [1] http://www.javaworld.com/article/2076604/hotspot--a-new-breed-of-virtual-machine.html http://www.javaworld.com/article/2076604/hotspot--a-new-bree... [2] http://www.strongtalk.org/history.html http://www.strongtalk.org/history.html [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12160439 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12160439 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12284279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12284279
- peatmoss 9y ago
  Ah, that's an important distinction I had somehow forgotten that HotSpot wasn't there from the beginning. Thank you for the summary links--interesting history!
cwp 9y ago
If I've understood the lore correctly, Sun chose Java over Self as their big language for the future. Some of the key people that worked on the Self VM (including Urs Hölzle and Lars Bak) left to join Anamorphic, founded by David Griswold. They built Strongtalk, and were later acquired by Sun, to incorporate the Self VM technology into Java. This was called HotSpot when it was released. Note that the above is mostly unrelated to this paper, except where it mentions that type information wasn't used for performance.
- cwp 9y ago
  Oh, and it's worth noting that Dart is essentially the modern version of all this: a dynamic, class-based language, a fast VM that optimizes base on type feedback, and an IDE based on optional static type annotations. It's no coincidence, given that Gilad Bracha and Lars Bak were the initial designers of Dart.

niftich 9y ago

It wasn't for the first JVM; it was for HotSpot, the JIT engine that replaced [1] Sun's previous JVM in 1999. HotSpot was developed by the same team that worked on Strongtalk [2], including the linked submission's author Bracha, who were later acqui-hired by Sun [2]. See also my previous comments that summarize this and recount the achievements of the rest of the Strongtalk team, who all went on to be significant contributors to various domains [3][4]. [1] http://www.javaworld.com/article/2076604/hotspot--a-new-breed-of-virtual-machine.html http://www.javaworld.com/article/2076604/hotspot--a-new-bree... [2] http://www.strongtalk.org/history.html http://www.strongtalk.org/history.html [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12160439 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12160439 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12284279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12284279

peatmoss 9y ago
Ah, that's an important distinction I had somehow forgotten that HotSpot wasn't there from the beginning. Thank you for the summary links--interesting history!

cwp 9y ago

If I've understood the lore correctly, Sun chose Java over Self as their big language for the future. Some of the key people that worked on the Self VM (including Urs Hölzle and Lars Bak) left to join Anamorphic, founded by David Griswold. They built Strongtalk, and were later acquired by Sun, to incorporate the Self VM technology into Java. This was called HotSpot when it was released. Note that the above is mostly unrelated to this paper, except where it mentions that type information wasn't used for performance.

cwp 9y ago
Oh, and it's worth noting that Dart is essentially the modern version of all this: a dynamic, class-based language, a fast VM that optimizes base on type feedback, and an IDE based on optional static type annotations. It's no coincidence, given that Gilad Bracha and Lars Bak were the initial designers of Dart.