Making Squeak Fly ( Was: Re: Where Squeak is Headed [was: Module discussion] )

Dan --

Are you / is anybody doing work on typing a la StrongTalk?  To quote 
from your post awhile ago in the "Animorphic ST (Strongtalk) released!" 
thread:

>>  Would the system benefit from being cast into StrongTalk?
 >>  and how much work would this be?

By "would the system benefit" I assume that you meant primarily 
something like what you said in the same post:

>>  I think type annotations are useful as documentation, and I have 
always felt (and often said) that a Smalltalk with optional types would 
be an ideal computing environment.  It really >>  fills a hole in the 
metasystem.

I know there was a lot of discussion about this question., on that 
thread.  In light of that discussion and further reflection, do you 
think there is a compelling case for  introducing  Squeak-friendly types 
system?  Also, has anybody done the analysis on how much work would have 
to be done?

  >>    Would anyone care if it ran 10 times faster?

OK, I'm an ignoramus.  Let's call the speed gains from typing a la 
StrongTalk, A, and let's call the speed gains from J5, B.

Would J5 and  types together equal a speed improvement of A + B?  

Or does the stuff Ian is doing with J5 involve some kind of magic typing 
behind-the-scenes, so that A + B ~ B?  


Dan Ingalls wrote:

> Jitter
> One of my goals over the next few months is to continue to encourage Ian to 
> complete J5, the latest incarnation of his dynamic translation technology 
> applied to Squeak.  On the last serious go-round, it helped a lot to have 
> Marcus Denker tracking down bugs, beating compilers into line, etc, and Ian may 
> well need this kind of help with J5.  I'm not the right person, but I would 
> certainly lobby to hook people up at any point where Ian could use help.  I 
> haven't seen anything about it, but I'm assuming Ian will be showing and 
> talking about his work at OOPSLA.  Jitter is a prime example of why I hope we 
> can keep the Croquet and Squeak kernels in sync:  I doubt that Ian wants to 
> maintain more than one version of J5, and I know both Squeak in general and 
> Croquet in particular, could always use an extra 2-5x in performance.
>
>
>