[chuck-users] ChubbY (ChucK in Ruby)?

[Craig Latta]

Hi--

      Kas writes:

 > ...some things follow from Ruby being interpreted and ChucK being
 > compiled.

      Mike responds:

 > I would put it this way: Some things follow from Ruby being reflexive
 > and everything in Ruby being an object.  I think that it matters a lot
 > less that it's compiled.  After all, we're compiling to byte code that
 > runs in a VM, correct?  It's not native code that its running.

      Right, and of course there are other systems which go further, 
translating those virtual-machine instructions into hardware processor 
instructions. Some of those do absolutely everything at runtime (no 
edit/run/restart cycle), and some of *those* (my own favorite is Squeak) 
can do music and garbage collection at the same time without missing 
deadlines.

      The thing that matters to me is the immediacy I get from dynamism. 
I don't ever want to have to stop the processes that make my music. 
ChucK comes close to that feeling, by making the edit/spork cycle very 
quick, but to propagate the effects of code changes I still have to kill 
shreds I would rather leave running during a performance. (Apologies if 
the situation has changed, I haven't actively used ChucK for my own work 
in several months. And apologies if I'm rehashing stuff everyone already 
knows. :)

      Anyway, "interpreted" and "compiled" are not mutually exclusive. 
The dichotomy one is really talking about here is "dynamic" versus 
"static", and both can yield usable performance.


-C

--
Craig Latta
composer and token Smalltalk hacker :)
www.netjam.org