Self-interest June 2004

self-interest@lists.selflanguage.org

17 participants
16 discussions

Re: [self-interest] simplicity
by Chandrasekhar Ramakrishnan 02 Jul '04

02 Jul '04

Ian Woollard schrieb: > For example in C++ you can do things like: > > { > FileHandle f = open("/adirectory/aFile", open); > > f << "I went to the zoo"; > } > > And the file may be automagically closed as f goes out of scope. Yes, but you could also do this: class ZooWriter { FileHandle mFH; public: void write_zoo() { mFH = open("/adir/afile", open); mFH << "I went to the zoo"; } void after_writing_zoo_write_home() { mFH << ". Then I went home"; } void essay() { write_zoo(); after_writing_zoo_write_home(); } } And then you'll have a problem. (Aside -- how would you implement the open function described in your example? Instead of creating an open function, I would have given FileHandle a two argument constructor and written FileHandle f("path", open), but there's always more I can learn about C++.) > But this is unreliable in Java/Self/Smalltalk- you don't know when the > GC will get around to release it. I consider this to be a bug in these > languages. Yes, but if your runtime uses a two-space GC implementation and collects recently allocated objects more frequently, the file handle will be closed reasonably soon, and you get the added bonus that the example I provided won't cause any problems. - sekhar -- C. Ramakrishnan cramakrishnan(a)acm.org

8 17

Language enhancements
by Michael Latta 28 Jun '04

28 Jun '04

I am considering creating a VM for Self with some language extensions and would like comments: 1) I am considering making the inheritance of structural slots declarative. Rather than listing the copydowns in each child object, allowing the parent to annotate a slot as copied. The child objects would still need to be able to exclude those they replace with behavior. 2) I am considering adding an annotation to a slot that will cause it to be cloned when the object is cloned. These ideas come from working with modeling where there is more declarative work. The items above would also need syntax to support textual definition of those aspects. For example 2 above could be <slot>+ to indicate aggregation. The idea is to reduce errors and reduce code to manage these aspects of a system. Let me know what you think, or if there are good reasons to leave it in code. Michael

6 13

deterministic behavior and GC
by Kyle Hayes 28 Jun '04

28 Jun '04

There's a pretty good article up on CiteSeer: http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/cheng01scalable.html Real-time GC (which means timely deallocation etc.). Excuse the cross post, but both groups seem to be talking about this stuff with some regularity. Best, Kyle

1 0

Downloading Mango
by oscar_lopez_p 28 Jun '04

28 Jun '04

Hello, Where can I get Mango? . The link in Sun's site is broken, and I can't find it anywhere else. I'm using SELF 4.2.1 on Mac OS X Panther . Will Mango still work in this version/OS ? Thanks a lot, -Oscar.

2 2

Self vs. Squeak
by Michael Latta 25 Jun '04

25 Jun '04

I am still getting to know both environments after a long absence from Smalltalk doing Java projects. I am trying to compare the two environments from several angles to decide which is a better jumping off point. Here is what I have observed so far: 1) I like the Self language better, if it only had full blocks. But, both are far better than Java or C++!!! 2) Squeak has a much more active community that can provide support/help/ideas. 3) Squeak is far larger in terms of libraries. 4) Squeak runs on Windows ( an advantage for comercial projects ). What I could use comments about from anyone that has used both environments: 1) How stable are the two environments? While I had several stability issues with Self at the beginning, they seem to be gone now. 2) How hard is each VM to modify? Neither seems to have much if any comments! (bad programmers, bad programmers :-) 3) The graphics model in Squeak seems to be a reasonable graphics model (transforms, etc), but being all in Smalltalk how does it perform? 4) What is the relative performance of the two VMs for headless programming tasks, and for UI tasks? I started a company that built one of the first commercial Smalltalk applications (still an active product) in 1986, so I know it can be done. The issue today is higher expectations on the part of the users, and far faster hardware. While the hardware should make using Smalltalk / Self easier, the graphics requirements seem to do just the opposite. A large Java project I am working on is far slower than our Smalltalk app was in 1986 on a Mac II !!! There apparently is a Java to native code compiler for GCC that produces much better performance than the current VMs, has this approach been attempted for Self or Smalltalk along the lines of Objective-C? Has anyone tried a Self/Smalltalk to Objective-C translator? Or, are blocks and GC really the performance issues in the equation? Michael

3 4

Does Self have become:
by Michael Latta 23 Jun '04

23 Jun '04

The subject says it all. Does Self have the equivalent of "become:"? Michael

4 6

Primitive help
by Michael Latta 21 Jun '04

21 Jun '04

The primitive docs are primitive. Is there more than the one comment on PrimMaker? It was pretty cryptic. I am looking at doing an OpenGL binding for Self as a start on some UI work. I need to be able to pass arrays of data, not just primitives. It looks like there is a way to pass a Self object for the primitive to access (indexed slots, but I could use some pointers. Are there any examples other than the system primitives? They do so little it is hard to extend them to more complex cases. Michael

1 0

Scaling in canvases
by Michael Latta 20 Jun '04

20 Jun '04

I know I am on my own here, but the protocol for canvas supports scaling, but not the pixmapCanvas for the Mac. I will see what I can do to correct this. If it takes work in the C code I could use a pointer. Thanks, Michael

2 2

Merlin and Self
by Michael Latta 19 Jun '04

19 Jun '04

Jecel, Did you ever incorporate the concurrency ideas from TinySelf into your Merlin product? Many of the Merlintec pages are very out of date (the english ones anyway). What is the current status? Michael

3 3

Real threads?
by Michael Latta 18 Jun '04

18 Jun '04

Has there been any thought to using real threads so that dual processor systems can be fully utilized? Michael

2 2

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Self-interest June 2004