There are several items that need to be worked on to make a
complete Smalltalk for .NET implementation. Here's an incomplete list of
items. If you would like to work on an item, please send
us email.
- Add ability to subclass .NET classes. Currently, all classes must be
subclasses of a special root class so we can implement doesNotUnderstand:
properly. Instead of making a special root class, we can implement a
special root interface with all of the appropriate methods.
- Add ability to define methods that don't have #Smalltalk types and
#Smalltalk names. For example, suppose you with to export the #at:put:
method in Array. Currently, that method is compiled as #at:put:, but that
isn't a valid name for languages like C#. Furthermore, that method takes
two Smalltalk objects, not an integer and an object.
- Use type inferencing to eliminate some SmallInteger objects. For
example, if we have the following code, "1 to: 1000 do: [:i | self foo]",
that creates 1000 SmallInteger objects. However, we don't need the full
blown objects and can use int32 instead. This will speed up some integer
calculations. In addition to eliminating some SmallInteger objects, we can
also eliminate float objects, compile time type checks, etc.
- Build a bigger class library. The current class library does not have
support for much more than the ANSI standard. To be a proper Smalltalk, we
need support for databases, GUI's, etc. Many of these items are in the
.NET class library so we can use their implementations, but we may want to
make wrappers around their functionality.
- Build development tools. If you think vi or emacs is the best development
environment, then you'll like the current suite of development tools.
However, there are some of us that want refactoring support for our
development tools.
- Optimize the code. Currently, there hasn't been any optimization on
the #Smalltalk code. The compiler takes too much time and memory to
compile a simple program. Some of the memory appears to be outside the
compiler's control, but there should be some optimizations to make it run
faster.
- Improve the compiler's error messages. Some errors give the user no
clue of what failed or how to fix it. This is not good. We need to add
more specific error messages.
- Fix bugs (isn't this on every one's list).
Sharp Smalltalk Links:
Download Now!
Class Library
Compiler
Debugger
Implementation
To Do |
