3 ms·

> redefine "constants" like true by mistake No, really not by mistake — intentionally, because someone told you that it was possible and you wondered what that

• nine_k 5y ago
  Surely, Smalltalk did have some adoption, and a huge influence! The JIT that made the JVM fast was adopted from Smalltalk! All the GUI stuff was heavily influenced by Smalltalk. Etc. But there were and are much fewer Smalltalk jobs in the industry than C++ jobs (though the Smalltalk jobs paid better). Much like there were more number-crunching C++ jobs than APL or k jobs, up until some key ideas of APL were made available wrapped in Python, and numpy jobs skyrocketed. Maybe something similar will happen to some key Smalltalk ideas!
  • Rochus 5y ago
    > The JIT that made the JVM fast was adopted from Smalltalk No, that was technology developed for the Self programming language which didn't have much in common with ST (see e.g https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1238844.1238853 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1238844.1238853, there is also an interesting talk by Ungar and Smith). The same technology was also used for an ST dialect (Strongtalk) which was quickly discontinued in favor of Java Hotspot. The influence of ST is generally overstated.
    • e12e 5y ago
      > No, that was technology developed for the Self programming language which didn't have much in common with St (...) My understanding was always that self grew out of smalltalk? But I suppose the jit work in particular was developed for/in self? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_(programming_language) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_(programming_language)
      • jecel 5y ago
        A key development in dynamic compilation happened in Xerox PARC to allow Smalltalk to run well on commercial workstations: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/800017.800542 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/800017.800542 "Efficient implementation of the smalltalk-80 system" by L. Peter Deutsch and Allan M. Schiffman in POPL '84: Proceedings of the 11th ACM SIGACT-SIGPLAN symposium on Principles of programming languages, January 1984, Pages 297–302 This motivated the creation of the ParcPlace spinoff to commercialize this technology. It was not the first JIT, but quite a few modern ones were inspired by it. Self started out as one of the "Smalltalk-86" projects at Xerox PARC with Randy Smith collaborating with Berkeley's David Ungar. It was supposed to be a simpler and purer Smalltalk even if that made practical implementations impossible. But with David Ungar becoming a professor at Stanford, he found students that helped him make it possible, and eventually even much faster than existing Smalltalks. Craig Chambers worked on type inference for Self 1 and 2 and then Urs Hölzle worked on adaptive compilation with type feedback for Self 3 and 4. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/191080.191116 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/191080.191116 "A third-generation SELF implementation: reconciling responsiveness with performance" by Urs Hölzle and David Ungar in OOPSLA '94: Proceedings of the ninth annual conference on Object-oriented programming systems, language, and applications, October 1994, Pages 229–243 This is the technology that became "Hot Spot" for Java. But very few virtual machines have this level of sophistication.
    • igouy 5y ago
      >The influence of ST is generally overstated. My guess is the influence of Strongtalk is in this context taken to be influence of Smalltalk. http://www.strongtalk.org/history.html http://www.strongtalk.org/history.html