7 ms·

While I do think that this has merit, is it actually a viable project that could sustain itself after this initial period of development? Smalltalk did bring s

While I do think that this has merit, is it actually a viable project that could sustain itself after this initial period of development? Smalltalk did bring some new ideas to industry back in the 1980s, when we were otherwise still using C, Fortran, COBOL, some Pascal variant, or assembly for most tasks. These days, however, I'm not so sure that there are any compelling reasons to use it. There are many well-established languages today that offer essentially all of its most practical features, including ones that target the JVM. Its class library does appear outdated these days. Its development environment approach never really proved useful for real-world development in the past. There are already existing Smalltalk environments of various types, including free and open source ones, but they never seem to get any significant traction, and we never really see them being used for any significant development. What would make this implementation's outcome be any different?

dysoco 14y ago
Well, the same happened to LISP languages. They never seem to get a lot of traction... until Clojure appeared.
- jerf 14y ago
  I think that's part of what PommeDeTerre is asking; is there any oxygen left over for a JVM Scheme variant in a world with Scala and Clojure? (And an already-existing line of other languages trailing behind them.) If this were just some other open source project, I'd say go nuts, but we've got a guy here who presumably could get a very good job volunteering to live on raman for 4-6 months to do this thing, so I think this question needs to be considered, even if the answer is ultimately "yes".
  - deltasquared 14y ago
    The reason you don't see many implementations of Scheme is that Java's calling conventions do not jive well with tail call optimization. This is the same reason that Clojure has the recur keyword: http://clojure.org/special_forms#Special http://clojure.org/special_forms#Special Forms--(recur exprs*)
    - amalter 14y ago
      See also Scala's compiler, which detects and re-writes tail calls as stackless iterations (http://oldfashionedsoftware.com/2008/09/27/tail-recursion-basics-in-scala/ http://oldfashionedsoftware.com/2008/09/27/tail-recursion-ba...)
- yarrel 14y ago
  The Smalltalk equivalent of Clojure is Ruby.
  - endlessvoid94 14y ago
    Could you elaborate on how you see Ruby as a modern Smalltalk?
    - cbsmith 14y ago
      Seriously? Ruby block syntax is straight up lifted from Smalltalk, not to mention much of the semantics and standard library. Ruby seems like what Smalltalk would be if it was built as a scripting language with file-based structure... and then dragged through the mud of Perl syntax. ;-)
      - endlessvoid94 14y ago
        No need to be condescending, I was genuinely curious. At first glance, the two languages seem similar, but not as much as Clojure is to CL (or any other lisp).
        rubinelli 14y ago
        It's hard to detect if a terse question is a request for information or a challenge. Back to the subject, Ruby's OO is much closer to Smalltalk's vision. Method dispatching in Java is essentially dereferencing a function pointer (found by traversing a class hierarchy) and adding a hidden argument (self.) In Ruby, you can override an object's method dispatching mechanism to be whatever you want it to be (although the default behavior is very similar to Java's.) This makes it a lot harder to optimize, (your JIT compiler can't simply inline those calls) but it opens all kinds of interesting meta-programming possibilities.
        spooneybarger 14y ago
        For anyone interested in the general topic of implementing a dynamic language on the jvm, Charles Nutter has a ton of good material around invoke dynamic and jruby.
- cbsmith 14y ago
  Also I hear that JavaScript thing is catching on...
  - nicksergeant 14y ago
    JavaScript is Lisp now?
    - zackzackzack 14y ago
      It's pretty damn close. First class functions give javascript great power. Combined with something like sweet.js and underscore, and javascript becomes a language with the functional library of a lisp along with macros. After that, javascript is just lisp with really weird syntax.
      - chimeracoder 14y ago
        Not to be snarky, but that's like saying 'Javascript is just a Lisp except without the only characteristic that defines a Lisp'. All the dialects of Lisp differ except in their homoiconicity, which is the one thing that gives Lisps their incredible expressive power. I get frustrated when I hear people refer to languages with first-class functions as Lisp-like, because lots of languages have first-class functions, but that doesn't give them the power of Lisp - Lisp draws its power from homoiconic structure, which almost no other languages have (certainly not Javascript).
        zackzackzack 14y ago
        Most of my comment comes from the fact that Eich originally wanted to build a homoiconic lisp for netscape and built many of the features into javascript instead. Still no a lisp ,but it was designed to be similar. http://www.2ality.com/2011/03/javascript-how-it-all-began.html http://www.2ality.com/2011/03/javascript-how-it-all-began.ht...
    - bgarbiak 14y ago
      Crockford called it "Lisp in C's Clothing" and then created this: http://www.crockford.com/javascript/little.html http://www.crockford.com/javascript/little.html
- reinhardt 14y ago
  Wondering when the "Clojure has a big traction" meme will die already, or at least be qualified with "in HN discussions". I give it a year.
spooneybarger 14y ago
One of the contributors here, we believe that one of Smalltalk's problems has been it's inability to 'play nice with the outside world'. Smalltalk was designed to be the OS, the user environment, everything. It was one thing that encompasses what we now consider to be many different things. We are building a Smalltalk to fit into the existing jvm ecosystem. To work with eclipse, intellij, the profilers etc etc while still remaining at its core, a Smalltalk. Are we high? Maybe. But it is our axiom and what we believe in and we are giving it a shot.
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  Personally, I've always thought Smalltalk's problem was the exact opposite: it tried to be a portion of the OS but not quite enough. I'd like to see a Smalltalk that took some tips from Erlang.
  - spooneybarger 14y ago
    you might find SqueakNos interesting: http://squeaknos.blogspot.com http://squeaknos.blogspot.com smalltalk was originally the entire stack, from the hardware all the way up, i agree that for a long time, it lived in a weird in between world where it was sort of an OS and sort of not. working out how to keep what makes 'smalltalk smalltalk' while ironing out those issues is something that both redline and pharo are trying to solve from different angles. i'm interested in hearing more about the taking tips from erlang idea. i'd love to chat more via email: sean@monkeysnatchbanana.com
    - flyinRyan 14y ago
      I actually prefer not to link my HN account to an email. Do you mind if we just discuss it on here or some similar format?
      - spooneybarger 14y ago
        throw away gmail account perhaps?
ianstallings 14y ago
And the ultimate situational irony being that it's built on the JVM, which was built for Java, which was built on all the great ideas of Smalltalk.
- philwelch 14y ago
  Well, some of them.
padillac 14y ago
Smalltalk offers things similar to Ruby, in a much more attractive package (imo). The language is smaller and more consistent. That's good enough for me.

dysoco 14y ago

Well, the same happened to LISP languages. They never seem to get a lot of traction... until Clojure appeared.

jerf 14y ago
I think that's part of what PommeDeTerre is asking; is there any oxygen left over for a JVM Scheme variant in a world with Scala and Clojure? (And an already-existing line of other languages trailing behind them.) If this were just some other open source project, I'd say go nuts, but we've got a guy here who presumably could get a very good job volunteering to live on raman for 4-6 months to do this thing, so I think this question needs to be considered, even if the answer is ultimately "yes".
- deltasquared 14y ago
  The reason you don't see many implementations of Scheme is that Java's calling conventions do not jive well with tail call optimization. This is the same reason that Clojure has the recur keyword: http://clojure.org/special_forms#Special http://clojure.org/special_forms#Special Forms--(recur exprs*)
  - amalter 14y ago
    See also Scala's compiler, which detects and re-writes tail calls as stackless iterations (http://oldfashionedsoftware.com/2008/09/27/tail-recursion-basics-in-scala/ http://oldfashionedsoftware.com/2008/09/27/tail-recursion-ba...)
yarrel 14y ago
The Smalltalk equivalent of Clojure is Ruby.
- endlessvoid94 14y ago
  Could you elaborate on how you see Ruby as a modern Smalltalk?
  - cbsmith 14y ago
    Seriously? Ruby block syntax is straight up lifted from Smalltalk, not to mention much of the semantics and standard library. Ruby seems like what Smalltalk would be if it was built as a scripting language with file-based structure... and then dragged through the mud of Perl syntax. ;-)
    - endlessvoid94 14y ago
      No need to be condescending, I was genuinely curious. At first glance, the two languages seem similar, but not as much as Clojure is to CL (or any other lisp).
      - rubinelli 14y ago
        It's hard to detect if a terse question is a request for information or a challenge. Back to the subject, Ruby's OO is much closer to Smalltalk's vision. Method dispatching in Java is essentially dereferencing a function pointer (found by traversing a class hierarchy) and adding a hidden argument (self.) In Ruby, you can override an object's method dispatching mechanism to be whatever you want it to be (although the default behavior is very similar to Java's.) This makes it a lot harder to optimize, (your JIT compiler can't simply inline those calls) but it opens all kinds of interesting meta-programming possibilities.
        spooneybarger 14y ago
        For anyone interested in the general topic of implementing a dynamic language on the jvm, Charles Nutter has a ton of good material around invoke dynamic and jruby.
cbsmith 14y ago
Also I hear that JavaScript thing is catching on...
- nicksergeant 14y ago
  JavaScript is Lisp now?
  - zackzackzack 14y ago
    It's pretty damn close. First class functions give javascript great power. Combined with something like sweet.js and underscore, and javascript becomes a language with the functional library of a lisp along with macros. After that, javascript is just lisp with really weird syntax.
    - chimeracoder 14y ago
      Not to be snarky, but that's like saying 'Javascript is just a Lisp except without the only characteristic that defines a Lisp'. All the dialects of Lisp differ except in their homoiconicity, which is the one thing that gives Lisps their incredible expressive power. I get frustrated when I hear people refer to languages with first-class functions as Lisp-like, because lots of languages have first-class functions, but that doesn't give them the power of Lisp - Lisp draws its power from homoiconic structure, which almost no other languages have (certainly not Javascript).
      - zackzackzack 14y ago
        Most of my comment comes from the fact that Eich originally wanted to build a homoiconic lisp for netscape and built many of the features into javascript instead. Still no a lisp ,but it was designed to be similar. http://www.2ality.com/2011/03/javascript-how-it-all-began.html http://www.2ality.com/2011/03/javascript-how-it-all-began.ht...
  - bgarbiak 14y ago
    Crockford called it "Lisp in C's Clothing" and then created this: http://www.crockford.com/javascript/little.html http://www.crockford.com/javascript/little.html
reinhardt 14y ago
Wondering when the "Clojure has a big traction" meme will die already, or at least be qualified with "in HN discussions". I give it a year.

spooneybarger 14y ago

One of the contributors here, we believe that one of Smalltalk's problems has been it's inability to 'play nice with the outside world'. Smalltalk was designed to be the OS, the user environment, everything. It was one thing that encompasses what we now consider to be many different things. We are building a Smalltalk to fit into the existing jvm ecosystem. To work with eclipse, intellij, the profilers etc etc while still remaining at its core, a Smalltalk. Are we high? Maybe. But it is our axiom and what we believe in and we are giving it a shot.

flyinRyan 14y ago
Personally, I've always thought Smalltalk's problem was the exact opposite: it tried to be a portion of the OS but not quite enough. I'd like to see a Smalltalk that took some tips from Erlang.
- spooneybarger 14y ago
  you might find SqueakNos interesting: http://squeaknos.blogspot.com http://squeaknos.blogspot.com smalltalk was originally the entire stack, from the hardware all the way up, i agree that for a long time, it lived in a weird in between world where it was sort of an OS and sort of not. working out how to keep what makes 'smalltalk smalltalk' while ironing out those issues is something that both redline and pharo are trying to solve from different angles. i'm interested in hearing more about the taking tips from erlang idea. i'd love to chat more via email: sean@monkeysnatchbanana.com
  - flyinRyan 14y ago
    I actually prefer not to link my HN account to an email. Do you mind if we just discuss it on here or some similar format?
    - spooneybarger 14y ago
      throw away gmail account perhaps?

ianstallings 14y ago

And the ultimate situational irony being that it's built on the JVM, which was built for Java, which was built on all the great ideas of Smalltalk.

philwelch 14y ago
Well, some of them.

padillac 14y ago

Smalltalk offers things similar to Ruby, in a much more attractive package (imo). The language is smaller and more consistent. That's good enough for me.