Future concerns

I know it's might be a bit early to ponder about it, but I was
wondering about the following usual pain points with new JVM languages
(Or at least, what I've witnessed with Clojure).

1) Choice of UI library.

Do different Smalltalk implementation have a unified UI? If so, would
that be developed for Redline, or will Swing be the de facto
standard ?

I know the focus seems primarily web application development for now,
so that might be really a concern for later.

2) Building and distribution tools.
In this area, JRuby has an excellent story with Rake and Gems. Also I
think Groovy projects are using Gradle.

On the Clojure side, Maven seemed to be a reluctant standard until
other building tools emerged like Leiningen and Cake (which also keeps
a hot JVM running to alleviate start up times.) (http://
blog.raynes.me/?p=48)

Right now Redline itself is built using Ant, which is a fine choice.

3) Repl integration in IDEs. Sorry again, I only know the Clojure side
of it. Separate efforts began on different IDEs, but there is now an
attempt to make a reusable network REPL to be used accross different
IDEs. (https://github.com/clojure/tools.nrepl)

Again, it's early to be talking about these points, but I'm always
curious to know what's coming for a language.

Btw, I think the name Redline Smalltalk rocks 8)

Happy Holidays!

Good questions. All worth considering.

My response is inline below.

.> 1) Choice of UI library.
>
> Do different Smalltalk implementation have a unified UI? If so, would
> that be developed for Redline, or will Swing be the de facto
> standard ?

Where people need a UI for non-web apps it is likely to be swing.
It would be nice to incorporate the old WindowBuilder or
InterfaceBuilder (nextStep)

> 2) Building and distribution tools.
> In this area, JRuby has an excellent story with Rake and Gems. Also I
> think Groovy projects are using Gradle.

There will be a similar set of tools for Redline, stake is in the
works, which is
a make like tool similar to rake for ruby.  I know there is more to
build tools than
this, and whatever is done will take into accound things like IVY/
Maven and
Montecello.

>
> On the Clojure side, Maven seemed to be a reluctant standard until
> other building tools emerged like Leiningen and Cake (which also keeps
> a hot JVM running to alleviate start up times.) (http://
> blog.raynes.me/?p=48)
>

Stir has already been developed, by Eddy Pronk. It is SmallTalk
InteRactive, a native
app (so its fast and small) - it is an interractive command line
(REPL) like Ruby IRB.
Stir will start up a Smalltalk instance and send commands to it (like
cake) so the
feedback loop is small and fast.

> Right now Redline itself is built using Ant, which is a fine choice.
>

> 3) Repl integration in IDEs. Sorry again, I only know the Clojure side
> of it. Separate efforts began on different IDEs, but there is now an
> attempt to make a reusable network REPL to be used accross different
> IDEs. (https://github.com/clojure/tools.nrepl)
>
This is Stir - you can tell stir to use instances of smalltalk
regardless of where
they run.  Redline is architected so it can  be embedded easily.

The guys at IntelliJ have said to me they are developing a plug-in to
support Smalltalk
and I am looking at converting the Ruby plugin from Eclipse.


> Btw, I think the name Redline Smalltalk rocks 8)
>
> Happy Holidays!

Thanks again for the questions and interest. I hope Redline is just
what you
are looking for in an evironment and language.