A Strategic Opportunity for Smalltalk
Mark Shuttleworth:
"Instead of fighting over turf or syntax, I sensed a genuine willingness to synthesize the best work from both camps into something that could have both Python's pop-culture widespread appeal, and pedagogical foundations that build on years of Alan's experience in the Squeak world. The mouse might yet become the snake's strongest ally."
The computational model (which depends heavily on the VM) is strategic.
Syntax (which is just a matter of which compiler one happens to use) is tactical.
Avi Bryant had the right idea: Strategic thinkers in the Smalltalk community should create strong, compelling implementations of Python, Ruby and Perl, hosted on Smalltalk VMs--such as Squeak's.
Adding Erlang, Haskell, Io and Ocaml wouldn't hurt, either.
When it comes to advanced, dynamic programming languages, it's "United we stand, divided we fall."
1 comment:
Or port Squeak to Parrot, which probably has a lot better chance of having other languages already buying in for interoperability.
Parrot has legs. Time to take advantage of that. And Parrot's underlying object model has recently switch to prototype-based, ala Self, so implementing a tighter class system should be relatively straightforward. And Parrot uses continuation-passing-style, so co-routines are trivial.
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