On 25 Nov 2013, at 21:13, kilon alios <kilon.alios@gmail.com> wrote:
I don't see a problem. Sockets provide a way to communicate, sockets nowadays are used almost everywhere. They have their limitations but its a viable , very fast and simple solution.
Also you can use Redline Smalltalk -> http://www.redline.st/ if you want to run smalltalk on JVM.
I vaguely remember that Squeak had the Ometa project that was working as a converter between languages , I think Java was supported.
Keep in mind that supporting syntax is one thing, semantics is the other⦠Ometa is just a (very nice) tool for making implementing a parser for syntax easier, very much like PetitParser. I once did a very, very naive demo of adding other *syntax* to Squeak⦠http://www.slideshare.net/MarcusDenker/a-programming-language-babel But the problem is that the *semantics* are still that of Smalltalk, and itâs completely not clear for the programmer where the similarity ends. If you want to have âI can type in examples from my ruby bookâ compatibility, you need to implement the real semantics, which in many cases means to re-implement the VM of that other language (in a very slow version) on top of your VM which does not really have the properties to support those semantics. There has been more research recently about multi-language VMs⦠or frameworks to build VMs (PyPy, for example). Without this support, getting 100% correct semantic *and* be fast enough (not even fast) is very hard. Marcus