Squeak-dev March 2001

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139 participants
508 discussions

Re: benchmarks
by ajh18＠cornell.edu 30 Mar '01

30 Mar '01

Tom <tmb(a)lumo.com> wrote: > I was curious where the various implementations of a few > dynamic languages stand now and I implemented some simple > benchmarks. You can find them at http://www.lumo.com/squeak-bench/ > In general, Squeak does pretty well compared to Python. But why does Squeak do poorly compared to Java (even without JIT)? Is it mainly because Java has static typing and no escaping method contexts (blocks)?

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Re: [newbie] how does Object implement new?
by David N. Smith 30 Mar '01

30 Mar '01

At 22:21 +0200 3/29/01, Andreas Kuckartz wrote: >I strongly recommend the PDF-file "The Behavior of Behavior" which was >created by David N. Smith and Jerry L. Archibald. (You will perhaps learn >more about metaclasses than you ever wanted to know:-). A link to the file >is available on this page: > >Metaclass >http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/678 > >Andreas Since the swici server seems to be down, one might also try: http://www.dnsmith.com/dnsmith/Smalltalk/BEHAVTUT.pdf The file contains the foils used in an OOPSLA tutorial from 1990 and uses a Digitalk implementation as the main example. However the fine details differ, the ideas are the same. There are some pictures that might be useful, too. The file is 333K. Dave -- _______________________________ David N. Smith IBM T J Watson Research Center Hawthorne, NY _______________________________ Any opinions or recommendations herein are those of the author and not of his employer.

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How to feel less stupid?
by Stephane Ducasse 30 Mar '01

30 Mar '01

Hi I feel stupid but I cannot find the admin page in our local Swiki (comanche). Any hints? What is the default admin password? Stef

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RE: benchmarks
by Peter Crowther 30 Mar '01

30 Mar '01

> From: G.J.Tielemans(a)dinkel.utwente.nl > Performance is one thing, but isn't Java loosing it's > platform independancy > now Microsoft goes it's own way after SUN's victory (?) in court? Depends --- I have Sun's Java VM on my Windows 2000 box, for example. There might be some fun with IE applets, though. The more disturbing one from my point of view was to discover a large pharmaceutical company that has an absolutely rigid .NET policy for *all* new projects. If it ain't in C#, they're not interested. Even if it's middle-tier code. - Peter

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RE: squeak.org down again?
by Jarvis, Robert P. (Contingent) 30 Mar '01

30 Mar '01

If you're going to set up mirrors, make sure there's plenty of smoke, too. :-) Bob Jarvis Compuware @ Timken > -----Original Message----- > From: news(a)cdegroot.com [mailto:news@cdegroot.com] > Sent: Friday, March 30, 2001 3:53 AM > To: squeak(a)cs.uiuc.edu > Subject: Re: squeak.org down again? > > > Bob Arning <arning(a)charm.net> said: > >It's not you. And you wouldn't believe what it *is*, so I'll > just say that it's being worked on. ;-) > > > Maybe it's time to setup a series of mirrors, like some other > projects? > (according to the format www.<country>.squeak.org, for example). >

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Experimental Bytecode
by Hans-Martin Mosner 30 Mar '01

30 Mar '01

On one of those days I stumbled over the method Interpreter>>experimentalBytecode. It's a very simple mechanism to get better performance for some common bytecode sequences, but the comment says that this bytecode is never generated. After implementing a method which would generate it, I knew why: the interpreter crashes when it gets there. But all is not lost... This changeset contains a fix for the Interpreter so that it correctly handles the shortcut bytecodes 138..143. I also added support in InstructionStream for simulating these bytecodes, and a method in CompiledMethod which scans for optimizable bytecode sequences and transforms them. To use all this, you need to generate a new VM. Do not execute CompiledMethod>>optimizeForExperimentalBytecode when running with an old VM, or your changed method will crash that VM! Cheers, Hans-Martin

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Re: squeak.org down again?
by Bob Arning 30 Mar '01

30 Mar '01

On Thu, 29 Mar 2001 16:38:13 -0700 David Farber <dfarber(a)numenor.com> wrote: >squeak.org seems to be down. (or is it just me?) David, It's not you. And you wouldn't believe what it *is*, so I'll just say that it's being worked on. ;-) Cheers, Bob

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Re: [newbie] how does Object implement new?
by Stephane Ducasse 30 Mar '01

30 Mar '01

on 3/30/01 3:21 AM, Alan Kay at Alan.Kay(a)disney.com wrote: > There's Dan's classic POPL paper from 1978 which contains a one page > diagram that shows the whole story. > > I don't have the URL handy, but this paper is available on line and > I'm sure someone in the Squeak list will furnish the URL. > > Also, Pierre Cointe has often used the ST-76 metasystem as his model > for his ObjVLisp work. There are some good descriptions there. If you want I have a complete implementation and tutorial of ObjVlisp is Smalltalk: http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~scg/Teaching/Reflective/ > Dan has threatened to get ST-76 going (and in fact the rebirth of > Thinglab required some of it to be done). One of these days it will > live again (this was my favorite of the post -72 Smalltalks). Every > feature really paid its way. Hi Alan The problem with ObjVlisp like model is that the composition of metaclasses is really THE BIG problem. In fact, this is true that with current Smalltalk implicit metaclass we lose the possibility to reuse metaclasses but at least the composition is safe and people have been buidling great software with it. I'm not convinced that with the simple ObjVLisp model we could do something. Anyway interested readers can read the excellent paper of Noury Bouraqui in OOPSLA 98 on Safe Metaclass Composition. All the problems and solutin are explained. > Cheers, > > Alan > > ------- > > At 6:42 PM -0500 3/29/01, Stephen Pair wrote: >> Are there any papers (or code) for Smalltalk-76 on the web? I'm sure >> they've been announced before (and wasn't there an implementation of it for >> Squeak?), but I've forgotten. >> >> - Stephen >> >>> -----Original Message----- >>> From: Alan Kay [mailto:Alan.Kay@disney.com] >>> Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2001 5:22 PM >>> To: squeak(a)cs.uiuc.edu >>> Subject: Re: [newbie] how does Object implement new? >>> >>> >>> Or look to see how Smalltalk-76 did it .... >>> >>> Cheers, >>> >>> Alan >>> >>> ------ >>> >>> At 5:40 PM -0500 3/29/01, Jecel Assumpcao Jr wrote: >>>> On Thursday 29 March 2001 14:37, Karl Wilson wrote: >>>>> why doesn't it say something like: >>>>> >>>>> ProtoObject class subclass #Object class >>>>> >>>>> instanceVariableNames: '' >>>> >>>> When you do "ProtoObject subclass: #Object ..." this method takes care >>>> of all these little details automatically. >>>> >>>>> and why can't you spawn a class side heirarchy? >>>>> >>>>> Behavior >>>>> ClassDescription >>>>> Class >>>>> ProtoObject class >>>>> Object class >>>> >>>> Ooops - I had said you would reach "Behavior class" but that was wrong. >>>> Since the system created all these metaclasses behind your back and >>>> doesn't even bother to give them proper names, showing them like this >>>> would probably cause more confusion. It is easy to patch the tools to >>>> do this, but I don't think it is a good idea. >>>> >>>>> I am sure this will all make sense after awhile. Thanks again. >>>> >>>> Others have given a lot of great pointers to more information about >>>> this than most people want to know. I prefer the alternative adopted by >>>> the Self dialect of Smalltalk - simply design this complication out of >>>> the language! http://www.sun.com/research/self/ >>>> >>>> -- Jecel >>> >

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[newbie] how does Object implement new?
by Karl Wilson 30 Mar '01

30 Mar '01

Merrily working away on the _Squeak OO Design with Multimedia Applications_ book. Joe the Box. I get curious about how "new" is implemented. How does Object (or ProtoObject) implement new? When you write Box>>new (Box is a subclass of Object): new ^super new initialize. where is the new that it is finding? I found Behavior>>new, which calls a primitive, which seems a likely possibility, but I can't see how Object uses it? What am I missing? I realize that this is the most basic of the basic. It is highly unnerving to have it be such a mystery. I mean if you are supposed to be able to find the implementation of almost anything in the system, shouldn't you be able to easily see how Object implements new? 8?( Karl (revealing the depths of newbieness)

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Re: [OT]Re: Browser Plugin 3.0 update
by Richard A. O'Keefe 30 Mar '01

30 Mar '01

Ned Konz <ned(a)bike-nomad.com> wrote: It's really just programmer laziness that makes us see URL's as a mirror of file systems, anyway... Not true. file: URI's *are* a mirror of file systems, and ftp: URI's don't strictly speaking *have* to be (an FTP server is at liberty to interpret "directory" names and "file" names as it wishes, even to use a noise diode to consult the spirit of its dead grandfather) but in practice almost always *is*. mailto: and news: URI's don't look like file system references, but http: ones do, and the model of file: and ftp: is hard to ignore. The amount of documentation you have to read to really understand what goes on in a web server is daunting, and I would regard the direct mapping from URIs to file names that servers make so very easy to set up as "beginners showing a proper humility and dread". It's certain evidence that a company claiming to be web experts aren't, as is syntactically illegal HTML, but Joe T. Web-Admin (T for Trainee) can be forgiven a lot. Mind you, if you open file:$cwd/foo with Amaya (the W3C's own browser), it will completely fail to notice that foo's content is HTML. You'd think the "<!DOCTYPE" line was a pretty good clue, but now, and there is no way to force it to open a file as HTML. I'd rather not know how you've organized your web server's file system. Just give me a clean, unchanging URI space that I can bookmark. Free of implementation details (.html/.gif/.jpg extensions, server names, .cgi/.jsp, etc.). I don't care how the file system is organised, but I ***do*** appreciate a clue about what I'll see if I follow a link. A link to a .htm file is one thing and a link to a .pdf file is another, and I'd like to know the difference *before* I go there. This is why I'd rather .csi, .asp, .jsp things were labelled according to what kind of document I'll end up with. (Yes, I am familiar with the HTML standards, and know that you can put the information in the anchor. Thing is, what the web browser knows about the link, it doesn't tell, except for the text of the URI.)

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