Squeak/Smalltalk - Java

Hiya,

I wonder if someone would clarify something for me (I'm hoping  
someone on the list may be involved/know someone on these projects):

I've noted a trend with two big Squeak apps, Alice and Sophie, going  
to Java for their next major release: Why is this so?

I'm all for using the right tool for the job, but why such a (huge?)  
step away from Smalltalk?

I can't see what Java will bring to Sophie that could not be done  
with Squeak and Seaside, according to the notes for version 2 on the  
Sophie site.

Is the funding tied to Java/Sun?

I'm glad Croquet is still in the picture, especially with the  
development of Cog (new VM).

Sorry if this isn't the best place for this, but I am a (concerned!)  
newbie!

Cheers,

Luis.


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> I've noted a trend with two big Squeak apps, Alice and Sophie, going to Java
> for their next major release: Why is this so?

I don't think Alice was ever in Squeak.

The team that built Sophie wanted to move it forward.  However, they
received their funding from a foundation that is not very technical.
This foundation tends to hop from developer-team to developer-team.
The Sophie group was the third one they had funded, I think.  The
Sophie team thought they were going to get their contract renewed
because they had met their objectives, but the foundation seemed to
want to keep up its team-hopping custom.  I don't know why they
decided the way they did, but it is common for companies to make
decisions that seem to engineers to be misguided.  They is why Dilbert
is so popular.  It is not enough to write good software, you have to
market it and make sure there is a user base and a management team
that supports it.

-Ralph
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On 05.03.2009, at 14:34, Ralph Johnson wrote:

>> I've noted a trend with two big Squeak apps, Alice and Sophie,  
>> going to Java
>> for their next major release: Why is this so?
>
> I don't think Alice was ever in Squeak.

The original Alice was implemented in C and Python, with user scripts  
written in a case-insensitive variant of Python. That Alice core was  
ported to Squeak (called "Wonderland", using the Balloon3D graphics  
engine). This was never officially part of the Alice project, but of  
course the Alice and Squeak folks regularly exchanged ideas.

Alice 2.0 is implemented in Java. User scripts were not written in  
Java but using tile-scripts (similar to Etoys). You can turn on a  
switch to show punctuation on tiles to make it look more like a  
textual syntax.

Now Alice 3.0 is going to expose Java programming directly, to appeal  
to CS1 courses.

- Bert -


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