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From: rej@cornell.UUCP (Ralph Johnson)
Newsgroups: net.micro,net.lang.st80
Subject: Re: "Smalltalk Coming to Micros!" ?... HA!
Message-ID: <1121@cornell.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 16-Jul-84 22:24:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: cornell.1121
Posted: Mon Jul 16 22:24:47 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 18-Jul-84 01:54:30 EDT
References: <1113@ritcv.UUCP>
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept.
Lines: 24

If you look at the recent Smalltalk papers (such as the ones in the
latest POPL or the paper on Berkeley Smalltalk in the latest SIGSOFT
(the last may be wrong)) it is obvious that current opinion is that
several megabytes of main memory is needed for Smalltalk.  However,
"Bits of History ..." refers to versions of Smalltalk for Z80 and 8086
class machines.  The Alto was not a very powerful computer - the Mac
should be able to run rings around it.  If these machines could run
Smalltalk, why couldn't a current micro?

One thing to note is that most Smalltalk machines are inefficient.  The
ports to 68000 machines reported in "Bits ..." are incredibly slow, one
needed five second to echo a character!  However, implementations are
getting better.  Peter Deutsch describes a resonably efficient version
in the latest POPL proceedings.  In addition, many micro languages are
inefficient.  Smalltalk might make it as a cute toy, even if it were
too slow for serious work.

The biggest impediment to wide use of Smalltalk in the past has been
Xerox, since they did not let any information about it out.  Now that
they have let books be published and have even released the Smalltalk-80
virtual image (for a reasonably hefty fee) there is more chance that
Smalltalk will make it.

Ralph Johnson  {decvax!ihnp4!vax135! ...}!cornell!rej