jeh@ritcv.UUCP (07/13/84)
I just finished watching a show from Ontario Province called "Bits and Bytes".
It was shown on my local PBS station. In this episode, a man plays the role
of asking questions, and an apparent computer trends expert answers them. The
topic was computers in education:
Question Man: Programming? Me? Well, I did try a little BASIC once, and
that didn't seem to hard, and then I saw LOGO was even easier!
Is there anything coming up that is going to make our home
computers even easier to program?
Answer Woman: As a matter of fact there is. There is a new language that
will soon be available to micros. It's called...
Me, thinking: [Oh, God, she isn't going to say Smalltalk, is she?]
Answer Woman: ... "Smalltalk".
Me, thinking: [Oh, GOD! She said it!]
:-)
Anyway, the cameras then switched over to Adele Goldberg (by the way,
Goldberg.PA, if you're reading, congratulations on your new job as
president of the ACM!) telling us how great Browsers are because they
let you find interesting things while you are looking for something else.
We also saw some Xerox machine (probably a Dorado -- your typical home
computer micro) running Smalltalk-80.
To say the least, I was shocked. Does anyone out there want to defend
that prediction of Smalltalk-in-the-home-soon?
Jim Heliotis
{allegra,seismo}!rochester!ritcv!jeh
rocksvax!ritcv!jeh
ritcv!jeh@Rochester
P.S. Are a lot of UT people into Monty Python - type cartoon feet?BILLW@SRI-KL.ARPA (07/16/84)
There was a sort of tiny-smalltalk available from Exidy (to run on the exidy sorcerer computer, a Z80 cpm system, basically) several years ago. I beleive it was based on smalltalk-72, rather than smalltalk-80, and was called "Rosetta Smalltalk". I think Exidy has long since gone out of business... BillW
FISCHER@RUTGERS.ARPA (07/16/84)
From: Ron <FISCHER@RUTGERS.ARPA> Reading "Smalltalk: Bits of History, Words of Advice" I was under the impression that the language (with its current design) could not run well on anything less than a fast 68000 system (like 10MHz with no wait states, about a megabyte of memory and a carefully coded kernel). There is some newer work being done on using typing (yup) in Smalltalk to aid in open coding message passing. If done, this would result in a new version of the language (Smalltalk-85?) which might run on conventional processors. Apple produced a version of Smalltalk for the Lisa, but it was so abominably slow that it was never released as a product (Apple is probably not interested in doing much aside from building MacIntoshes nowadays). (ron) -------
rej@cornell.UUCP (Ralph Johnson) (07/17/84)
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!rejbrucec@orca.UUCP (Windows on the World at ECS) (07/17/84)
-------- There was a varient of Smalltalk-72 built by a company in Texas unconnected with Xerox, called Rosetta Smalltalk. It ran on the 8085, and was later ported to the (gasp!) iAPX-432. I used both for a while, and was convinced that: 1) Rosetta Smalltalk was not as powerful as Smalltalk-76 (and in retrospect, it was nothing like as useful as Smalltalk-80). 2) Smalltalk is a pig on a small machine. The 432 implementation had 256K to play with, but a fatal hardware design problem with the processor board it ran on made it intolerably slow. Good hardware, and the ability to run multi-CPU might have made the 432 Smalltalk (Intel sold it as OPL, for Object Programming Language) a reasonable demo for the chip and the language. Recent experience with honest-to-Goldberg Xerox Smalltalk-80 on a Tektronix Magnolia (there's a picture of it in the orange book), which is a 68000-based system, and is usually described as being about half as fast as a Dorado, have convinced me that Smalltalk is a viable programming language ON A REASONABLE PROCESSOR. The problem is that there aren't many micros which have the combination of features which make them really efficient for implementing the Smalltalk virtual machine. The 68000 works, but it needs a lot of help, in terms of support hardware, and that costs money. The Mac was built for large-scale, low-cost manufacturing, not high performance (the real killer is the way it handles the screen; it's quite elegant, and very cost-effective, but it would probably cut Smalltalk's throat on BitBlT). Smalltalk really needs large memories (> 1 Meg) and a hard disk, which adds quite a bit of money to any system. There's an apocryphal story I heard a couple of years ago, that the DEC implementation of Smalltalk-80 on the VAX used an entire 11-780 (single-user), and ran at 20 Kbytecodes per second, until it hit a BitBlT, at which point it went down to below 1. By contrast, Apple says that its Lisa Smalltalk ran at > 5 Kbytecodes/sec, and the Dorado is supposed to be capable of >30K. I think that Smalltalk is a lovely system, as long as it has reasonable response. Right now that means at least $15K, but in two years or so it will be much less. Bruce Cohen UUCP: ...!tektronix!orca!brucec CSNET: orca!brucec@tektronix ARPA: orca!brucec.tektronix@rand-relay USMail: M/S 61-183 Tektronix, Inc. P.O. Box 1000 Wilsonville, OR 97070
BILLW@SRI-KL.ARPA@sri-unix.UUCP (07/19/84)
Yeah. one of the problems getting Smalltalk-80 to run on a small machine is that its basically an interpreted system, like P-code. You write your smalltalk bytecode interpretter, and then you get the smalltalk image from xerox, and off you go... Wow, really slow, I wonder why? I suspect that a "native mode" implementation of a smalltalk like system could run pretty well on a 10Mhz 68K, but would be more work than anyone wants to do. Of course, if you have a processer with user writeable microcode, you might be able to do some interesting things... (thats the dorado advantage, right?). Did the vax version use user microcode? It might run on something with a really high clock rate and internal high speed cache (z800, 68020?).... BillW
guy@rlgvax.UUCP (Guy Harris) (07/22/84)
> I suspect that a "native mode" implementation of a smalltalk like system > could run pretty well on a 10Mhz 68K, but would be more work than anyone > wants to do. In the proceedings from the 11th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture, published as SIGARCH Newsletter Vol. 12, No. 3, June 1984, there's a paper called "Architecture of SOAR: Smalltalk on a RISC" which describes Berkeley's architectural design for a RISC machine oriented towards running Smalltalk in "native mode". Instead of compiling Smalltalk into bytecodes interpreted by an interpreter program or microcode, it compiles them into the SOAR instruction set which is a general-register-based RISC. > Of course, if you have a processer with user writeable microcode, you might > be able to do some interesting things... (thats the dorado advantage, > right?). That, plus a 70ns cycle time (about 1/3 that of an 11/780). > Did the vax version use user microcode? Not from what I can tell from the article in "Bits of History...". Guy Harris {seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy