Re:Design Principles Behind Smalltalk (1981)
by musicale on Friday May 20, 2022 @05:20PM
(#31452650)
> they don't leave you any way to leave their world to go get something from the real OS, or the bare metal, or wherever "outside" is.
Pretty sure the idea was and is to run Smalltalk on bare metal. Which you can absolutely do.
The more realistic problem is: what if you still need Firefox, or Office, or Photoshop? One solution is probably to run Windows and Smalltalk on a hypervisor. You still get low-level access from Smalltalk (hypervisor calls, hardware access, etc.) without giving up Windows (or Linux, etc.) apps and compatibility.
Running a web browser in a hypervisor is also probably a good idea for isolation reasons.
Another interesting idea is to run Smalltalk on the JVM (which itself was inspired by the Self and Smalltalk VMs.) You lose some low level access from Smalltalk but you gain interoperability with Java as well as portability.
Pretty sure the idea was and is to run Smalltalk on bare metal. Which you can absolutely do.
The more realistic problem is: what if you still need Firefox, or Office, or Photoshop? One solution is probably to run Windows and Smalltalk on a hypervisor. You still get low-level access from Smalltalk (hypervisor calls, hardware access, etc.) without giving up Windows (or Linux, etc.) apps and compatibility.
Running a web browser in a hypervisor is also probably a good idea for isolation reasons.
Another interesting idea is to run Smalltalk on the JVM (which itself was inspired by the Self and Smalltalk VMs.) You lose some low level access from Smalltalk but you gain interoperability with Java as well as portability.