Strongtalk: Smalltalk with a need for speed.
What Is Strongtalk?
Strongtalk is a major re-thinking of the Smalltalk-80 programming language and system. While retaining the basic Smalltalk syntax and semantics, it contains a number of significant advances, including:
Performance
Type System
The Strongtalk system was developed in secret in the mid-90’s by a small startup company. Before the Strongtalk system could be released, the company was acquired by Sun Microsystems, Inc. to work on the Java® virtual machine. Development of Strongtalk was halted at that point, so very few people have ever had a chance to see the Strongtalk system in action. This is highly unfortunate, since Smalltalk is still a more elegant and advanced programming language than any existing mainstream programming language, and Strongtalk is by far the fastest implementation of Smalltalk ever.
Neat. Go check it out
I think that James Robertson in his Cincom Smalltalk blog reported that VisualWorks was beating Strongtalk … Good, fast, cheap… pick any two …