3 ms·

While I appreciate that your comments are intended to promote Pharo, you seem to be saying that other Smalltalk implementations don't provide support for comman

by igouy 14y ago

While I appreciate that your comments are intended to promote Pharo, you seem to be saying that other Smalltalk implementations don't provide support for command-line applications, C FFI, a fast JIT, usable for real applications. That doesn't seem right to me.

gecko 14y ago
I think, in my head, I implicitly also had "open-source" in that list. There are several open-source Smalltalks that have some of these things, but I believe that Pharo is the only one that does all of them. For example, GNU Smalltalk is the only other Smalltalk I know that has a decent command-line interface, but it lacks a JIT. (If I have this wrong, hopefully Paolo will correct me.) You can absolutely use Squeak to write real-world applications, but the last I checked, you still had to either use the older, slower FFI or write a plugin if you wanted to call C, and the official distributions still do not include a JIT. Cuis is largely a subset of Squeak, and therefore has similar features and drawbacks, and so on and so forth. If you go closed-source, you do have more options. VisualWorks has a good C FFI and a fast JIT, and might have a great command-line interface (I honestly don't remember), but it's not even free-as-in-beer for hobby projects anymore. Dolphin is likewise fast and has great COM bindings and good libraries, but is proprietary, and has disappeared and come back enough I'm not entirely sure I'd feel comfortable spending money on it. So, yes, you're right, there are other Smalltalks that fulfill some of these requirements, but Pharo is, as far as I know, the only open-source one that fulfills all.
- igouy 14y ago
  >> VisualWorks ... but it's not even free-as-in-beer for hobby projects anymore. << Nonsense. "3. License Fees. This license is granted to you for your personal use only. Therefore, no license fees are involved, unless you breach the terms and conditions of this Agreement." http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/main/developer-community/trying-cincom-smalltalk/personal-use-license/ http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/main/developer-community/tryi... >> Dolphin ... I'm not entirely sure I'd feel comfortable spending money on it. << So don't -- "Dolphin Community Edition is our Smalltalk development environment that is FREE for personal/educational use." http://www.object-arts.com/products/dce.html http://www.object-arts.com/products/dce.html
  - emaringolo 14y ago
    Dolphin is stagnated since several years. It's a beatiful piece of Software, and the best Smalltalk Dialect in terms of native Windows integration. So good integration that its low level developer (Blair McGlashan) is working at Microsoft since several years ago.
dh83 14y ago
Pharo has quite a decent set of command-line tools at hand for a Smalltalk (see also http://pharobooks.gforge.inria.fr/PharoByExampleTwo-Eng/latest/ZeroConf.pdf http://pharobooks.gforge.inria.fr/PharoByExampleTwo-Eng/late...). As for FFI we're about to fully integrate NativeBoost into the system which already provides decent FFI interaction on all X86 platforms: https://code.google.com/p/nativeboost/ https://code.google.com/p/nativeboost/. The VM we use features a JIT, albeit not highly elaborate, it gives decent speedups. Besides that there is some research of mine going on, on how to implement the JIT native code generate at language side, which would give us the Smalltalk-level control over that piece.
- igouy 14y ago
  Wonderful! (I didn't ask about Pharo, I complained about promoting Pharo by dissing other Smalltalk implementations.)

by igouy 14y ago

gecko 14y ago

I think, in my head, I implicitly also had "open-source" in that list. There are several open-source Smalltalks that have some of these things, but I believe that Pharo is the only one that does all of them. For example, GNU Smalltalk is the only other Smalltalk I know that has a decent command-line interface, but it lacks a JIT. (If I have this wrong, hopefully Paolo will correct me.) You can absolutely use Squeak to write real-world applications, but the last I checked, you still had to either use the older, slower FFI or write a plugin if you wanted to call C, and the official distributions still do not include a JIT. Cuis is largely a subset of Squeak, and therefore has similar features and drawbacks, and so on and so forth. If you go closed-source, you do have more options. VisualWorks has a good C FFI and a fast JIT, and might have a great command-line interface (I honestly don't remember), but it's not even free-as-in-beer for hobby projects anymore. Dolphin is likewise fast and has great COM bindings and good libraries, but is proprietary, and has disappeared and come back enough I'm not entirely sure I'd feel comfortable spending money on it. So, yes, you're right, there are other Smalltalks that fulfill some of these requirements, but Pharo is, as far as I know, the only open-source one that fulfills all.

igouy 14y ago
>> VisualWorks ... but it's not even free-as-in-beer for hobby projects anymore. << Nonsense. "3. License Fees. This license is granted to you for your personal use only. Therefore, no license fees are involved, unless you breach the terms and conditions of this Agreement." http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/main/developer-community/trying-cincom-smalltalk/personal-use-license/ http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/main/developer-community/tryi... >> Dolphin ... I'm not entirely sure I'd feel comfortable spending money on it. << So don't -- "Dolphin Community Edition is our Smalltalk development environment that is FREE for personal/educational use." http://www.object-arts.com/products/dce.html http://www.object-arts.com/products/dce.html
- emaringolo 14y ago
  Dolphin is stagnated since several years. It's a beatiful piece of Software, and the best Smalltalk Dialect in terms of native Windows integration. So good integration that its low level developer (Blair McGlashan) is working at Microsoft since several years ago.

dh83 14y ago

Pharo has quite a decent set of command-line tools at hand for a Smalltalk (see also http://pharobooks.gforge.inria.fr/PharoByExampleTwo-Eng/latest/ZeroConf.pdf http://pharobooks.gforge.inria.fr/PharoByExampleTwo-Eng/late...). As for FFI we're about to fully integrate NativeBoost into the system which already provides decent FFI interaction on all X86 platforms: https://code.google.com/p/nativeboost/ https://code.google.com/p/nativeboost/. The VM we use features a JIT, albeit not highly elaborate, it gives decent speedups. Besides that there is some research of mine going on, on how to implement the JIT native code generate at language side, which would give us the Smalltalk-level control over that piece.

igouy 14y ago
Wonderful! (I didn't ask about Pharo, I complained about promoting Pharo by dissing other Smalltalk implementations.)