> nothing is impossible if you give it either infinite amount of resources or > infinite time. I think it would be a great idea, most likely doable with a > good team . That would mean probably the redesign of all FFIs but it would > gives us the ability to run tons of java libraries out of the box. Would > pharo be the same thing ? who cares, same is boring the real fun is to move > forward and improve constantly. > > Personally I dont care if pharo moves to JVM or not , I only care that it > moves forward and seem people excited and having fun with it.
:) The fun is important. What we want is well designed and powerful libraries that enabled people. For the JVM question: it is a question of resources + the fact that jvm do not really support well some key smalltalk operations. Now I do not understand why people develop their own vm instead of joining forces. Doing in the long term something and finishing a task are the most difficult things. Stef > Of course I would never sacrifice the very things that make Pharo special > like live coding, in favor of popularity. I have said before and I will say > it again I have zero issues with pharo not being popular, I tasted popular, > boring and annoying as hell. I am here because pharo is special and I want it > to remain special, a rebel , a fun way to code, an alternative way of > thinking. > > If I wanted popular I would be coding in Java. > > > On Tue, Dec 24, 2013 at 3:13 PM, Sven Van Caekenberghe <s...@stfx.eu> wrote: > Andy, > > On 22 Dec 2013, at 18:38, Andy Burnett <andy.burn...@knowinnovation.com> > wrote: > > > I am sure it would be a huge amount of work, and may not be a good idea at > > all. > > > > However, given the number of dynamic languages that now compile to JVM > > byte codes, I am curious whether there is anything about Pharo that > > would make this impossible? > > > > Cheers > > Andy > > This is a complex subject area which touches on many things/issues. I am not > capable of producing a good writeup, but I’ll try to give some kind of answer. > > It is really hard to define what makes Pharo (or Smalltalk) unique compared > to so many other environments. As you know, it is the special combination of > language, library, IDE and VM that constitutes the real magic: a live, > dynamic, late bound language with meta level capabilities, including many > libraries, frameworks and tools, written in itself. > > Like with Lisp, many/most of the features of Smalltalk can be found here and > there in other languages. Like with Lisp, there are many implementations of > some kind of Lisp/Smalltalk. This has all been done before. > > Moving Pharo (or Smalltalk) away from its own VM is certainly possible (up to > a point), but the question is: is it still the same thing ? If you can no > longer write your own debugger implemented in the same language ? If you > cannot read code all the way down ? > > Regards, > > Sven > > >
