Hello,

I think Ryan Macnak is working on having NewSpeak, which is a smalltalk-like language, running on the Dart VM.

The typical problems to run smalltalk on other VMs are how to implement this list of features with good performance:

- non local return

- become:

- thisContext

Not having become means you cannot add an instance variable to a class that has instances (Of course you could get it right from the first time you created the class :) ) and means no database proxies.

Non local returns can be implemented using exceptions but in this case it is usually slow (VMs such as hotspot optimizes exceptions, if the Dart VM does it, then it may be ok).

Not having thisContext means that you need to implement Continuations, Exceptions and the Debugger differently. If the language features Continuations and Exceptions, these two features can probably directly be mapped. The debugger can probably be mapped to the other VM debugging features too, admitting they have as much. But what happen when you edit the top method in the debugger, can the new VM use this method in the top context instead even if you do things such as adding literals or temporaries ?

Then there are little details such as what do happen when you compile and install a method at runtime (I'm talking about the Smalltalk IDE) ? Is everything compliant and fast ?��

I think there are guys working on the Dart VM that worked on a smalltalk VM before (I'm thinking of Gilad Bracha and Lars Bak). To go in that direction one should ask them what they think about it and how they would implement these 3 features. You can also ask Ryan Macnak about what he is doing.

Regards,

Clement

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