On 1 December 2012 19:36, Sven Van Caekenberghe <s...@stfx.eu> wrote: > > On 30 Nov 2012, at 23:33, Sebastian Nozzi <sebno...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> I think Redline is not trying to be a full-fledged Smalltalk (not like >> the Squeak port to the JVM). It is more in the spirit of Amber. A >> Smalltalk-to-Java compiler, with some underlying runtime support. It >> does not aim at supporting the full enchilada :-) > > IMO, the secret of Smalltalk is a delicate combination of elements, take some > out and the magic is gone. > > Java/JVM makes a distinction between int and Integer (and so on), cannot add > methods to closed classes, has some meta capacity but not all, needs much > more typing, cannot change many things at run time, and so …
I'm not sure that's a limitation of the JVM (not being able to extend classes, that is): in Clojure you can happily extend existing types through extend-type: (extend-type clojure.lang.IPersistentVector ComparableParser (eq [this that] (reduce #(and %1 %2) (map eq this that)))) comes from a library I'm working on. What's more, this extension is limited to this particular namespace. I _think_ this means that these extensions map selector namespacing. At any rate, you don't have the problems we have with overrides, because you can only use these functions when you import them (through require or use). > The question is: how much do you need for it to be this magical Smalltalk > thing ? Objective-C is also clearly Smalltalk inspired, more so than Java, > (dynamic typing / messaging) but you can hardly call it a real Smalltalk > system/experience. Indeed, that is the interesting question. (I don't really know the answer. "Aliveness" is part of it, but even trying to define aliveness is tricky. frank > Sven > > -- > Sven Van Caekenberghe > http://stfx.eu > Smalltalk is the Red Pill > > > >
