May 2011 - Pharo-dev - lists.pharo.org

Re: [Pharo-project] Popularity of Smalltalk in Software Industry

by StÃ©phane Ducasse

Thanks I may look at it. as well as the library dave mentioned. but busy Stef On May 7, 2011, at 3:00 AM, csrabak(a)bol.com.br wrote: > Em 06/05/2011 06:34, StÃ©phane Ducasse < stephane.ducasse(a)inria.fr > escreveu: > >> Probably we should find a way to generate HTML from PDF or Latex. > > From LaTeX to HTML obviously the path is to use LaTeX2HTML http://www.latex2html.org/ or if your LaTeX installation supports it htlatex to process the LaTeX sources into HTML pages. An older but still useful source of information is > > http://mirror.softwarelivre.ufsc.br/pub/ctan/info/webguide/webguide.html#QQ… > >> Any ideas? > > Create some classes in Pharo to do the job? >

May 7, 2011

Re: [Pharo-project] Popularity of Smalltalk in Software Industry

by StÃ©phane Ducasse

On May 7, 2011, at 2:49 AM, Stefan Marr wrote: > > On 07 May 2011, at 02:06, Igor Stasenko wrote: > >> On 6 May 2011 23:45, Stefan Marr <pharo(a)stefan-marr.de> wrote: >>> There is nothing fundamental in the RoarVM that is changing the language semantics of Smalltalk. >>> >>> It is just that for: `[do something] fork` you will have to assume that it is executed in parallel to other code. >>> >> only that? >> Heh.. then we're 99% done. Except that this last 1% is still could >> take years to complete :) > > But why? We show with the Squeak 3.x MVC image that it is perfectly possible. (the change set is absolutely minimal, and the only thing we needed to fix was some Delay related issues) when and where did you announce that? Where is the code? > > And, on top of that it is perfectly possible, there is a smooth transition path. > You can tell all your Process objects to just run on the main core in the beginning, and then just use the other cores for code you wrote specifically. > > Thus, there is a nice step-wise path. And I think I outlined that in my 20min presentation at the school after Stef asked. > BTW: are those videos somewhere accessible? > > From my perspective all it takes is someone who actually cares, and has the time to experiment a bit with parallel programming. > > The kernel, and the tools can be migrated step by step. > > However, that is just on top of the current RoarVM, which is certainly not as attractive as a CogVM with real thread support. > >> I can tell you more: there is no business cases for VM(s) which can do >> manycore :) > No manycore perhaps, but luckily the low-power end is pushing to multicore solutions. > So, your next iPhone and Android app will need to leverage at least two cores for optimal performance, and even quad-core phones are just around the corner. > > >> Implementing VM which enabling massive parallelism is just a >> beginning. Then obviously you need do to a lot at language side >> to leverage that, in order to really say "yes, our system(s) are aware >> of multicore and can scale almost linearly in future". > No, don't think so. If people got deadlines and a need, they will do it with the tools at hand. > And what I am doing here is absolutely not rocket science. Actually it is pretty hard to sell the engineering we do as science at all. Because the multicore VM problem has been solved a decade ago. They just forgot to tell us how... > > Best regards > Stefan > > -- > Stefan Marr > Software Languages Lab > Vrije Universiteit Brussel > Pleinlaan 2 / B-1050 Brussels / Belgium > http://soft.vub.ac.be/~smarr > Phone: +32 2 629 2974 > Fax: +32 2 629 3525 > >

May 7, 2011

Re: [Pharo-project] Popularity of Smalltalk in Software Industry

by StÃ©phane Ducasse

> > Once, for Squeak VM, i made an implementation to move scheduling away > from VM into language. > It was fully working, and you were free to change scheduling logic > without touching VM anymore. > What you think how many people reacted to that? How many of them would > like to pursue this further? me but I'm an idiot. So I do not count. Stef

May 7, 2011

Re: [Pharo-project] Popularity of Smalltalk in Software Industry

by StÃ©phane Ducasse

this is the story of a funny guy that went to the beer fest at Munich and stand up on the table took the mic and shouted that he hated beer and that germans were women becaise only water was important.... the story does not say what the guy became. Thanks stefan, your point about web presence crappy doc is taken and we will have soon a server for webdoc and we will convert our lovely books from pdf to html-crap. Stef

May 7, 2011

Re: [Pharo-project] Popularity of Smalltalk in Software Industry

by StÃ©phane Ducasse

On May 6, 2011, at 7:35 PM, Dave Mason wrote: > On May 6, 2011, at 13:25, Igor Stasenko wrote: > >> Seriously, if you want such kind of shitty interface, which allows you >> to call arbitrary function with arbitrary arguments >> without any argument type checking, i can write it for you. > > Well, yes, actually. If it means they can access the big wide world beyond Smalltalk, lots of people *would* like that. Of course they'd like it better if there were the nice type-checking, etc. but presumably that would come incrementally. > > Seriously, this might be something I could contribute to Pharo. Especially if Igor can get a simple, but functional, start going easily. **Please** dave join the force. Stef > > ../Dave

May 7, 2011

Re: [Pharo-project] Popularity of Smalltalk in Software Industry

by StÃ©phane Ducasse

>> Seriously, if you want such kind of shitty interface, which allows you >> to call arbitrary function with arbitrary arguments >> without any argument type checking, i can write it for you. > > call me crazy but: yes i would like that interface. > > ctypes works very well. i have used it plenty. it gives you the ability to get access to libraries trivially. you dont have to spend a week writing a wrapper for something you might only need for a short period of time. if you need to use that library extensively then you need to spend the time writing a proper library for it. you can call me crazy but i find functionality like this *extraordinarily* useful. both python and ruby have very nice implementations, its kind of a shame we dont yet. > > were all adults here, i understand that if i do something stupid i will get bad results, but i like having the ability to make that decision. Ok Igor will do it :) Igor you have too now :) Stef

May 7, 2011

Re: [Pharo-project] Popularity of Smalltalk in Software Industry

by StÃ©phane Ducasse

> >> Ah, and the day has just 24h so don't expect anything from me beside the VM work, thats already enough to keep a whole team busy. > > This statement is true for most of us, just replace "VM" with something else. > > About RoarVM. > I think the main reason why RoarVM does not exists for Pharo is > because there was no discussion and planning beforehead, how we could > cooperate. > Where the discussion, how we could introduce new execution models, and > gradually (means step by step) migrate to new VM? +1 > > Take into account there there is virtually no knowledge outside of > your team, what has to be changed in order to make Pharo run on > RoarVM. > So what did you expected? That people drop everything which already > works well for them and hastily migrate to new platform? > > How about CogVM? Should we stop developing it? Or we should start > supporting both? And can we do that without too much pain? Give us the > idea. > > I, personally all for having VM which knows how to exploit > multicore/manycore systems. But at what costs? +1 > At cost of throwing away everything and implementing new VM and new > smalltalk from scratch? I can do that myself. But then i wouldn't come > to pharo list to say > that i don't give a shit about pharo. > Because if i would like Pharo to use my stuff, i will stay with people > and help, and try to figure out how we can manage to leverage new > technology without jumping too high > with the risk to break the legs. +1 > > It makes no point saying here that you don't give a shit about Pharo. > If you don't, why pharoers should? > > I appreciate the engineering effort what you have did. But its a top > of the iceberg. Migrating existing system to another platform is very > complex task, > and given that day has 24 hours in it.. figure the answer :)

May 7, 2011

Re: [Pharo-project] Popularity of Smalltalk in Software Industry

by StÃ©phane Ducasse

Laurent igor is right if the bindings are done and package then of course this is different than just calling them. Stef > > > Is it works because someone already provided a bindings for libraries > you mention, > or you did it by yourself? > > Have just used ctypes: > > >>> import ctypes > >>> import ctypes.util > >>> ctypes.util.find_library("yaz") > '/usr/local/lib/libyaz.dylib' > >>> yaz = ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary("libyaz.dylib") > >>> con = yaz.ZOOM_connection_new("z3950.loc.gov", 7090); > > Indeed, I think the great thing is that I could write this in 5 mn just looking at the doc, haven't used python for years. > > In Pharo, well, ......... > > > Laurent. > > > > Laurent > > > Here a first hit from google search: > > http://lists.indexdata.dk/pipermail/yazlist/2002-May/000269.html > > <quote> > I wrote these files for more than 2 years ago to play with SWIG and PERL, they > are far from being used, but I have just done a fast perl test and the results > were just fine. > > zclient.c > zclient.h > zclinet.i swig interface file > > The zclient_wrap.c will be created as > > > swig -python zclient.i > > which should be compiled and linked with the rest > </quote> > > So? Do you think it was easy in first place to a guy who did it from scratch? > Now you can easily use it (and its just works out of the box). But it > is because someone did it before you! > > And if you gonna repeat same from scratch, then you will have to learn: > - C > - SWIG > - Python > > so, do you still think that it easier to do that in Python than in Smalltalk? > > > But when I was working with Python and Ruby several years ago things was > > easy (for my needs), I think because of documentation. > > Laurent > > > > > > -- > Best regards, > Igor Stasenko AKA sig. > > >

May 7, 2011

Re: [Pharo-project] Popularity of Smalltalk in Software Industry

by StÃ©phane Ducasse

>> >> So what are you doing here, the less the noise the best for everyone >> else. You don't contribute, you only criticize, and then you said you >> don't care, the we don't care about your "opinion". You can keep it for >> yourself. > > Well, I think my work on the RoarVM is some contribution, no? Perhaps, I would be more interested in Pharo if it would actually run nicely on the RoarVM, but I am stuck with a Squeak 3.x MVC image for my day to day work. And without anyone from the community approaching the work to make Pharo thread-safe that won't change. you can say that simply because I encouraged you to push some fixes to pharo and you told me that I have to do it myself more or less. So > It is nice to change the world with Pharo, but the future is multi/manycore and Pharo does not support it. Ah, and the day has just 24h so don't expect anything from me beside the VM work, thats already enough to keep a whole team busy. you see. This is always other job :) Stef

May 7, 2011

Re: [Pharo-project] Popularity of Smalltalk in Software Industry

by Douglas Brebner

On 07/05/2011 01:06, Igor Stasenko wrote: > On 6 May 2011 23:45, Stefan Marr<pharo(a)stefan-marr.de> wrote: >> On 06 May 2011, at 19:08, Igor Stasenko wrote: >> >>> How about CogVM? Should we stop developing it? Or we should start >>> supporting both? And can we do that without too much pain? Give us the >>> idea. >> It is all about adopting the ideas, and I could collaboration on that, but I can't do that work. >> The only problem I see is that there does not seem to be a business case for a CogVM with parallel Smalltalk Process execution. >> > I can tell you more: there is no business cases for VM(s) which can do > manycore :) > At least, to my perception, there is not much pressure from people > (even on mainstream languages) to leverage this technology. > I thought it is very close to come into our houses, but no.. it stuck > somewhere on marketplace, buying a better clothes. > I have the bad feeling that there will continue to be no business case for manycore VMs (or serious concurrency in general) until we hit a wall at which point they'll suddenly go from uninteresting to desperately essential and any language not able to make the jump will be in big trouble. Besides, wasn't part of Smalltalk all about leading the way rather than following behind?

May 7, 2011