Re: Learning Slang

Way back on Jan 10th, Sean P. DeNigris wrote:
> What is the best way? Is there a tutorial available somewhere?

I am sorry that a VM expert did not reply. As a fellow beginner, I
don't know the answer to your first question. However, I have the
following two documents on my reading list for when I have a need to
learn Slang.

* Squeak : open personal computing and multimedia, c.2002 (the new blue book)
Mark Guzdial; Stephen T Pope; Kim Rose
http://www.worldcat.org/title/squeak-open-personal-computing-and-multimedia/oclc/248089961
http://www.worldcat.org/title/squeak-open-personal-computing-and-multimedia/oclc/48085740
Chapter on Extending the Squeak Virtual Machine  by Andrew C. Greenberg
Draft at http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/CollectiveNBlueBook/greenberg.pdf

* the original Blue Book
Smalltalk-80: The Language and its Implementation By Adele Goldberg
and David Robson; Xerox Palo Alto Research Center ISBN 0-201-11371-6.
http://www.worldcat.org/title/smalltalk-80-the-language-and-its-implementation/oclc/8667261/editions
Chapters 26 to 30  (pages 538 to 688) in particular pages 569 and 570.
Scan at http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/BlueBook/Bluebook.pdf

Although Adele Goldberg's book doesn't mention VMMaker or Slang, my
limited understanding is that the extensive code presented in Chapters
27 to 30 is written in a 16 bit version of Slang.

Some of the public method comments in CCodeGenerator and in the
"*VMMaker-translation support" category extension methods look as
though they would also be helpful to a learner.

Would experienced VM devs please correct any of my misunderstandings,
or suggest any other learning resources?

David
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On Feb 1, 2012, at 11:24 AM, David Corking wrote:

> Way back on Jan 10th, Sean P. DeNigris wrote:
>> What is the best way? Is there a tutorial available somewhere?
>
> Although Adele Goldberg's book doesn't mention VMMaker or Slang, my
> limited understanding is that the extensive code presented in Chapters
> 27 to 30 is written in a 16 bit version of Slang.
>

No. The Bluebook just uses Smalltalk pseudocode for documentation, it
was never actually compiled.

        Marcus

--
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Marcus Denker  wrote:

>> Although Adele Goldberg's book doesn't mention VMMaker or Slang, my
>> limited understanding is that the extensive code presented in Chapters
>> 27 to 30 is written in a 16 bit version of Slang.
>>
>
> No. The Bluebook just uses Smalltalk pseudocode for documentation, it
> was never actually compiled.

Thanks Marcus for correcting my error. I had misunderstood a comment
about the Blue Book that Dan Ingalls made in an interview a few years
ago. (I got the mistaken impression that the code was drawn from
PARC's actual reference implementation of the Smalltalk-80 VM.)

Nevertheless, some of the methods in Squeak's Interpreter look
remarkably similar to the pseudocode, so I hope the documentation, if
not the Smalltalk pseudocode, will prove to be be useful to me, as
there is only limited documentation in the Squeak sources.

David
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On Feb 1, 2012, at 3:42 PM, David Corking wrote:
Yes, so the code base that is now written in SLANG started with the Smalltalk
pseude-code of the blue book.

But the blue books code was never used for the implementation back then.
(the VM was implemented very low level, in parts in the micro code of the processor...)

So they took documentation and ran it. cool, not? Now of course SLANG is not nice....
imagine a VM written in Smalltalk that would be runtime changable...

        Marcus

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Hi...for learning SLANG, the best way I found so far is by browsing the VM code itself :)
Then when I needed to start writing my own stuff, I always found problems because I was thinking in smalltalk so I crashed into a wall when I remember it was slang ;)  but after a while you get it.  The other thing I do is that when I need to write something, I think in which part the VM could do something similar. Then I search in the VM and I learn how it does that.  My biggest problem was to understand the limits if slang, that is, when the subset is finishes and you are actually moving to pure Smalltalk ;)   For that I found this useful: CCodeGenerator>>initializeCTranslationDictionary

Cheers











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http://marianopeck.wordpress.com


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On Thu, Feb 2,

Mariano Martinez Peck wrote:
> when the
> subset is finishes and you are actually moving to pure Smalltalk ;)   For
> that I found this useful: CCodeGenerator>>initializeCTranslationDictionary

Wow! Thanks Mariano. What a great piece of documentation by code.

Marcus Denker wrote:

> imagine a VM written in Smalltalk that would be runtime changable...

InterpreterSimulator does that, doesn't it? (All it needs is more
speed ;) ) In all seriousness, however, is there a research team
somewhere with such a VM on its agenda? I can imagine the need to
sacrifice portability for flexibility.

David
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