From: Brian Marick <marick@...>
Date: 2002-05-21T04:27:48+09:00
Subject: Re: E

At 2:06 AM +0900 5/21/02, Christian Rishoej wrote:
>  > Here is where it gets interesting ...
>>
>>  http://www.skyhunter.com/marcs/ewalnut.html#SEC18
>>
>>  (and it is interesting!)
>
>Would it be impossible to add nonblocking promises to Ruby?
>
>I mean an eventualt operator (for "eventual send" as described in
>http://www.skyhunter.com/marcs/ewalnut.html#SEC18) in addition to the
>current immediate method calls.
>
>Could it in fact not be implemented in Ruby itself?

Someone on the E list was talking about implementing promises in 
Ruby. (I believe it was as a prototype for a Squeak version, or a 
native C version, or something.) Unfortunately, I didn't save the 
note. If you're interested, you'll need to read the e-lang list, the 
thread called "Squeak-E". It was within the last month.

As E is implemented as a java library and a parser that turns a 
scripting language into calls to the library, a Ruby version should 
be straightforward. If anyone works on it, I'd be interested in 
helping. I consulted for the company that originally developed E, but 
never got into it as much as I'd like.