There were some exciting announcements today at MIX07.
- Silverlight 1.1 supports the CLR (Common Language Runtime)
- open source Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR)
- new language IronRuby
- Silverlight streaming deployment service
Congratulations to Microsoft on taking some bold initiatives - I sincerely hope that this marks the beginning of a new and more exciting era of online applications. And the inclusion of “cool” languages like Ruby will likely attract a host of new developers.
For my work, two things are of importance:
- the release of a CTP of the Silverlight CLR will finally allow me to examine its capabilities and limitations, so that I can proceed with porting Vista Smalltalk to Silverlight
- the DLR should allow me to build a much higher performance version of Vista Smalltalk
Over the next several weeks, I will be preparing a new release of Vst/.Net to integrate with the DLR and be better synchronized with the Flash version (Vst/Flash). Hopefully, I can reach a point where scripts can be run with minimal modifications across Flash/Apollo/Silverlight/Vista.
I have tried to base my architecture on sound design principles originating in Lisp/Smalltalk and I expect that it will easily adapt to any emerging requirements in the RIA space. Some key characteristics are that my languages are totally dynamic with no dependencies on external tools (Visual Studio, FlexBuilder, etc). This should enable them to be used in embedded application scripting roles.
In any case, let the new age begin. Maybe Microsoft isn’t quite so dead after all.
Competition is good. I wonder what would bend me toward this and away from adobe flex/apollo, though?
Comment by Patrick Logan — April 30, 2007 @ 9:58 pm
Peter,
I really like where you are going with Vista Smalltalk, it will make an excellent bridge for a new bread of applications going beyond mashups. I only hope that focusing on the two runtimes will not result in a fractured representation on both platforms. However, I do realize these technologies are moving targets and you have been doing a magnificent job of following them thus far.
I am looking forward to using Vista Smalltalk in creating the ‘new client server’ applications of tomorrow, finally blending applications and services using Smalltalk and Lisp of all languages =)
Comment by Travis Kay — May 1, 2007 @ 4:09 am
*breed … hell of a typo ;p
Comment by Travis Kay — May 1, 2007 @ 4:24 am
Patrick,
It depends upon your target client base. For a lot of applications, I would bet that most people would be unable to distinguish between a Flex/Apollo app and a Silverlight/.Net app.
So I think that both will be used extensively. Microsoft will probably win in high-intensity apps like games. Adobe will win with better support for Linux and older version of Windows.
And the innovation isn’t likely to stop either – we are just entering a whole new era in applications programming (IMHO).
Comment by pfisk — May 1, 2007 @ 4:22 pm
Travis,
Thanks for the kind words.
Hopefully the “moving targets” have stopped moving, at least for the next year or so.
The core of the runtimes that I write are quite small (5-10k lines for Adobe) and maybe less for Microsoft with their new runtime libraries. Once I rewrite the Vista Smalltalk kernel for the DLR, I can spend most of my time helping people to build applications.
– Peter
Comment by pfisk — May 1, 2007 @ 4:29 pm
Peter,
I played around with vista smalltalk for a little bit and found it very interesting. Is there any possibility in future to access .NET API directly from smalltalk and create applications(windows) outside of smalltalk Interface so that it feels like a native app, or is it out of scope of this project.
Comment by krishna — May 1, 2007 @ 5:03 pm
Krishna,
I will be rewriting the Vista Smalltalk kernel over the next several days to take advantage of the new Dynamic Language Runtime from Microsoft. Once I have the new build posted, there will be an SDK to integrate Vst into native applications. There will also be the same capability for the Flash version.
The intent is to let you use Vst as an embedded scripting language.
Comment by pfisk — May 1, 2007 @ 5:36 pm
Any thoughts yet on Sun’s Project Flair? It seems likely that it will be distinctly Smalltalkish. (Sun seems to be catching the Smalltalk religion since Dan Ingalls joined.)
Comment by Leo Comerford — May 2, 2007 @ 2:02 am
Leo,
Until I saw your comment, I had never heard of it.
Dan Ingalls is now a distinguished Sun engineer? That really changes things.
Thanks a lot for the information,
– Peter
Comment by pfisk — May 2, 2007 @ 1:39 pm