4 ms·

no, we reinvented Smalltalk. It only took 45 years EDIT: to realize it

actionfromafar 4y ago
We did, but not in this project. :-) This is indeed more like an embedded JVM, not totally unlike early J2ME, but with x86_64 instead of JVM instructions. Ruby is more like Smalltalk.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  not at all a critique on your project, if that was the impression I gave :) I'm old enough to remember when Java applets were invented, grew up using Visualage Smalltalk on OS/2 at school, and am still bitter that nobody ever said: but this is Smalltalk, why don't we use Smalltalk then? :)
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Because Smalltalk big supporters like IBM, decided to repurpose their Smalltalk offerings into Java. Visual Age Smalltalk had a role similar to .NET on the OS/2 ecosystem, SOM (OS/2 version of COM) supported Smalltalk, implementation inheritance and meta-classes, so yeah it didn't help to go full on Java. Also another Visual Age thing, Visual Age for C++ v4 also had a Smalltalk like experience for C++, unfortunely it was too demanding in resources.
thangalin 4y ago
Smalltalk was ahead of its time. So much so that its VM was unbearably slow. Thirsting for CPU power that just wasn't there. I recall using a Pentium-based machine and waiting up to five seconds to open a context menu, and the IDE (VisualWorks?) could not keep pace with my typing. I could type in a message name and watch the letters appear one-at-a-time. Compared with Borland's TurboPascal and similar IDEs of the day, Smalltalk was a slog, albeit a powerful one. There are other issues with Smalltalk that we know now that we didn't then. Such as broad and deep class hierarchies are hard to use. Smalltalk didn't enforce type-safety when I used it (i.e., you can have runtime faults because you can send any message to any class and if you didn't implement "does not understand", you won't know until exercising that branch).
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  > So much so that its VM was unbearably slow AFAIR Java applets, and the JVM in general, were not better. My experience with Smalltalk is from high school in the middle 90s, Java came out in 1996 and it was much slower than Smalltalk in my opinion. Also JavaScript in the browser was basically a joke and a nightmare to write and debug. Type safety is over-hyped IMO, JavaScript isn't type safe, look were it arrived. Even C++ is partially type safe and Java type safety is unsound https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3022671.2984004 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3022671.2984004

We did, but not in this project. :-) This is indeed more like an embedded JVM, not totally unlike early J2ME, but with x86_64 instead of JVM instructions. Ruby is more like Smalltalk.

peoplefromibiza 4y ago
not at all a critique on your project, if that was the impression I gave :) I'm old enough to remember when Java applets were invented, grew up using Visualage Smalltalk on OS/2 at school, and am still bitter that nobody ever said: but this is Smalltalk, why don't we use Smalltalk then? :)
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Because Smalltalk big supporters like IBM, decided to repurpose their Smalltalk offerings into Java. Visual Age Smalltalk had a role similar to .NET on the OS/2 ecosystem, SOM (OS/2 version of COM) supported Smalltalk, implementation inheritance and meta-classes, so yeah it didn't help to go full on Java. Also another Visual Age thing, Visual Age for C++ v4 also had a Smalltalk like experience for C++, unfortunely it was too demanding in resources.

thangalin 4y ago

Smalltalk was ahead of its time. So much so that its VM was unbearably slow. Thirsting for CPU power that just wasn't there. I recall using a Pentium-based machine and waiting up to five seconds to open a context menu, and the IDE (VisualWorks?) could not keep pace with my typing. I could type in a message name and watch the letters appear one-at-a-time. Compared with Borland's TurboPascal and similar IDEs of the day, Smalltalk was a slog, albeit a powerful one. There are other issues with Smalltalk that we know now that we didn't then. Such as broad and deep class hierarchies are hard to use. Smalltalk didn't enforce type-safety when I used it (i.e., you can have runtime faults because you can send any message to any class and if you didn't implement "does not understand", you won't know until exercising that branch).

peoplefromibiza 4y ago
> So much so that its VM was unbearably slow AFAIR Java applets, and the JVM in general, were not better. My experience with Smalltalk is from high school in the middle 90s, Java came out in 1996 and it was much slower than Smalltalk in my opinion. Also JavaScript in the browser was basically a joke and a nightmare to write and debug. Type safety is over-hyped IMO, JavaScript isn't type safe, look were it arrived. Even C++ is partially type safe and Java type safety is unsound https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3022671.2984004 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3022671.2984004