[SunRescue] Re: smalltalk is cool! squeak on Unix is amazing!

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Tuesday, May 29, 2001 at 14:11:41 (-0400), Joshua D. Boyd wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [SunRescue] Re: smalltalk is cool!  squeak on Unix is amazing!
>
> Since both Java and Small talk run on virtual machines, I wish someone
> would make a gas module to allow programming the VMs directly.  It might
> make things easier for little ol' me to understand.

Java's bloated ugly VM is an entirely different critter.....

In essense though any virtual machine is just that -- a virtual machine
(though not in the sense of a "partition" in an IBM mainframe being a
virtual machine, but more in the sense of being a machine that exists
only on paper and in simulations).

I think the first commonly used VM outside of the Smalltalk community
was probably the p-Code machine from UCSD Pascal, though perhaps Knuth's
MIX was the first widely known (though not used) virtual machine.

In Squeak the majority of the VM (except for primitives that deal
directly with the outside world), and indeed the interpreter that runs
directly atop the VM, are all written completely in Smalltalk themselves
so you can easily examine how they work and indeed program the VM
directly yourself, and even simulate the VM itself from within your
running image!

> Another project that I find interesting: common lisp and scheme in
> smalltalk.  Especially if CL classes could call smalltalk classes and vice
> versa.

I think you're missing the main point of Smalltalk (and indeed of all
object oriented computing, though you're not alone):  it's not the
objects, it's the messages!

Just as in the real world objects (be they cells, single or otherwise),
rocks, grains of salt, etc., nothing interesting happens until they
start to interact, and often *how* they interact is what's interesting!
 
(BTW, you don't need to quote my entire message back to me when
you reply, especially not when you reply via the list where such
complete quoting is frowned upon! :-)

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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