Musing out loud... [Why not Smalltalk?]

[Eric Clayberg]

"Reinout Heeck" <reinz at Desk.org> wrote in message
news:3AD98C4C.FD3B94EC at Desk.org...
> Eric Langjahr wrote:
> >
> > I'm not sure you info on 'hotspot' is totally correct.  If I recall
> > there was another company working on this vm called Anamorphic, I
> > think.
> >
> > At any rate I think the initial plans were for this vm technology to
> > be used in smalltalk implementations.
> >
> > Sun bought the company and the technology was morphed to be used in
> > the java vm.
> >
> > On Sat, 14 Apr 2001 10:58:29 +0200, Reinout Heeck <reinz at Desk.org>
> > wrote:
> > >
> [...]
> > >
> > >Javaites probably know that the Self VM project was where Sun's
> > >'hotspot' technology was developed.
>
> Here's how Sun presents it
>   http://java.sun.com/products/hotspot/whitepaper.html
>
> "
> The Java HotSpot performance engine architecture addresses the Java
> programming language performance issues described above by using
> adaptive optimization technology. Adaptive optimization is the fruit of
> many years of research into object-oriented language implementation
> performed by the Self group at Sun's research division.

That's a pretty funny example of revisionist history for those of us who
were around when Anamorphic first built HotSpot (for Smalltalk) and shopped
it around (in 1996). ParcPlace-Digitalk considered buying it but the price
was way too high. Sun bought the company and technology for several tens of
millions of dollars, scrapped the Smalltalk piece and spent the next few
years struggling to get Anamorphic's Java proof of concept to work.

What Sun says above is sort of true, but leaves out quite a few intermediate
steps. Several of the ideas for HotSpot originated with Self (or were well
known in the literature), but it took the Anamorphic team to pull them all
together and prove that they worked in concert. The Self group did not
create HotSpot; Sun bought it off the shelf.

-Eric