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From: pmuellr@pmuellr.raleigh.ibm.com (Patrick Mueller)
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Subject: Re: Smalltalk and the Internet
Date: Thu, 16 Nov 1995 16:48:17 +0000
Reply-To: pmuellr@vnet.ibm.com
References: <48d623$maj@nntp.crl.com> <421016576@to.mobil.com>
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Curt Welch - RDR (curt@to.mobil.com) wrote:
: In comp.lang.smalltalk, jwhitney@crl.com (John Whitney) writes:
: >Some thoughts on the use of Smalltalk on the internet....


: >Smalltalk, by its own
: >nature, is very similar to an operating system.  All Smalltalk objects
: >run on a virtual machine.

: Yes, but security was not a concern - so it wasn't built into the
: virtual language. (P code, etc).  It is built into Java.

True.  But security is NOT built into Java.  It's built into the
libraries.  When you read the Java docs, you realize when they talk
about security, they are often talking about safety.

There ARE some major security problems with Smalltalk.  Dave Thomas (OTI)
mentioned at his OOPSLA '95 keynote that they were working on some of
these security issues.  There are also other folks looking at this ...

: The other big missing piece in Smalltalk is the concept of libraries.
: I'm famillar with VW 1, and not other versions of Smalltalk - so I could
: be off here.  But, VW expects all the Smalltalk object to be in one
: image.  It doesn't support the concept of shared libraries of Object.

Not true.  I'm pretty sure Digitalk and ParcPlace support some notion
of this via SLLs (not really too familiar with it).  IBM Smalltalk will
support 'dll' concepts at some point - in fact, Smalltalk running on
CICS and IMS on the IBM mainframes already loads most of the image in
the LPA - making applications quite small.  (please don't ask me when;
it's NOT in version 3!!!)

IBM Smalltalk also has a concept of 'apps', which are dynamically loaded
class definitions and extentions, which can be operating system portable.

: The syntax of Java is C++ like, but the symantics is much more like
: Smalltalk than like C++.  Programming in Java (as far as I can tell)
: is more like programming in Smalltalk than it is like programming
: in C++.

: But, Java apps are stored and transmitted as byte codes - not
: as source code.  So there's a good chance that that a Smalltalk
: like front-end for Java could be created that would be 100%
: compatable with Java.  Creating a Smalltalk style language
: syntax for Java is one of the many things I've thought
: about doing (but don't really have the time to do..)

The problem with Java bytecodes (from a compiler-from-Smalltalk-code-
to-Java-bytecodes point of view) is that it's heavily typed.  If you
wanted to create a Smalltalk-ish front-end to Java, it would end up
having type declarations for variables, parameters, etc.  Oh yeah, what
about blocks :-)

What might be more fun is to do a Java bytecode interpreter in Smalltalk.

--
Patrick Mueller  | IBM Software Solutions, RTP NC; 919-254-4307, tie 444
                 | internet: pmuellr@vnet.ibm.com    vnet: pmuellr@carvm3
                 | home page (for IBMers): http://pmuellr.raleigh.ibm.com
