There was a promise long time ago that RTalk will be released soon enough and never happened. The difference with RTalk is not that is just smalltalk language on JVM , which frankly I dont care that much, but also the entire IDE, basically they replaced the Smalltalk bytecode with JVM bytecode and the rest is just smalltalk probably with the exception of few parts here and there.
Porting code to JVM and Javascript has 3 issues a) you are no longer able to use the libraries of your popular implementation (see Pharo) unless you wrap those libraries with something like JNA (a ffi for JAVA) b) most people would not use JVM unless if they have to and in most cases it will be more likely their code will be written in JAVA so they use JAVA c) JVM and Javascript languages are notorious for being slow , so once again fall back to JAVA and Javascript So those language ported to JVM act mainly as scripting languages, you got a JAVA app which is probably quite big and you port small parts of it to that other language to make your code more managable and less verbose. Python started similarly as a scripting language for C and then C++ , again for similar reasons. As a language grow in popular the more it got its own libraries ,, even though even back then it allowed for easy access to C/C++ libraries. So overall I doubt that Smalltalk will ever be a big hit on JVM or Javascript. The problem with smalltalk that other languages dont have is that it comes with an IDE , which is both a blessing and a curse. The last time I checked Pharo was 200k lines of codes, that is huge for a dynamic language. If we take out the IDE we lose a big advantage as developers, add to that the fact that other IDEs have very limited supported for Smalltalk and you end up as a not so cool situation especially if you are used to code in Pharo. This is something I have against with Amber. So the ideal scenario is for someone to do what Rtalk promised but that would requires someone or some coder with very deep knowledge of the JVM, So dont hold your breath. My choice is sticking with Pharo, sure Javascript and Java are nice sirens singing an irresistible song but I am not willing to give up the comforts of Pharo just so I have access to Java and Javascript libraries. Tempting but not that tempting. Pharo is an excellent choice if you are a lone coder and you want to be very productive which if you think of it is completely diffirent to what the JVM aims for which is big coder groups and big companies. On the other hand if there is a real need for Smalltalk on JVM then sooner or later someone will step up and start something. Right now from what I see Clojure and Scala are the only two langauge that get some attention , again nowhere near as much as other popular languages but they still somewhat popular. The thing with Clojure is that is not just lisp on JVM , there was already lisp for JVM called ABCL and never got popular, Clojure became popular not because its lisp but because it targeted concurrency and made it easier . If Smalltalk is to become ever as popular it has to bring something similar to the table and I think concurency would not be a bad idea either especially for those that are not big fans of lisp syntax and prefer something like Smalltalk. On Sat, Jan 17, 2015 at 6:37 PM, horrido <horrido.hobb...@gmail.com> wrote: > I had never heard of RTalk or Gravel. In all my Googling, I've never come > across these two. They're obviously not on the minds of very many people. > Are they even active projects? > > At least Redline is relatively prominent. At least James Ladd is actively > working on it. His efforts should be commended and *supported*. > > Let's rally around the Redline project. This should be doable. > > Generalissimo > > > Stephan Eggermont wrote > > continued from pharo-dev, please keep discussion here. > > > > The smalltalk on jvm situation is exactly like it shouldn't be. > > There are three implementations, not working together: > > - RTalk > > - Gravel > > - Redline > > > > The first two are driven by existing commercial smalltalk users > > coming from a platform that they feel is not sufficiently > > developing (different ones). This amount of fragmentation is ridiculous. > > Of course they have different priorities and needs, but it should be > > possible to share the work that all three feel they have to do. > > The result is that at least two of them move forward very slowly. > > > > Stephan > > > > > > -- > View this message in context: > http://forum.world.st/InfoWorld-on-Redline-Smalltalk-tp4799678p4800173.html > Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > >
