Bistro Language

"A bistro is a place in France where people meet to share coffee and small talk." -- Jean-Fran�ois Cloutier, Co-Founder, Noonetics

http://bistro.sourceforge.net/

From the paper "Smalltalk over Java: An Introduction To Bistro" by Nik Boyd (http://www.jps.net/nikboyd/papers/bistro/joop/index.htm):

Bistro is a new programming language that integrates the best features of Smalltalk and Javalanguage. Bistro is a variation of Smalltalk that runs on top of any JavaVirtualMachine that conforms to Sun's JavaLanguage specifications. Bistro represents a further evolution of Smalltalk, preserving much of its simplicity, expressiveness and readability.

Apart from a few minor extensions and differences in punctuation, the natural method syntax of Bistro is almost identical to that of Smalltalk. So, Smalltalk software developers will find most of Bistro familiar. However, Bistro also incorporates several language features from JavaLanguage, so that their integration appears relatively seamless.

I only just discovered this but at first glance it looks very interesting. Nice balance between the two languages (i.e. tilted over towards Smalltalk ;). Seems able to leverage a lot of both existing Smalltalk and existing Java. Open source (or at least reasonably open). My compliments to the chef (Mr Boyd). Has anyone else tried it etc? --RichardEmerson

integrates best features of Smalltalk

I would argue that one of the best features of Smalltalk is the browser, which Bistro lacks.

There doesn't seem to have been any activity on the Bistro sourceforge website, since 2000, ditto for the www.jps.net website...

(as of 05 Jun 2002) Bistro v3.5 was released 21 Apr 2002, supports Sun JDK v1.4

OK, there doesn't seem to have been any activity on the Bistro sourceforge website since that April 2002 release (and I'm writing this in June 2004). None of the SourceForge project's mailing lists or forums are active either so it's difficult to tell if anyone's actively using or developing this.

There is an update (October 2010) to Bistro 3.6 using Sun JDK v1.6

CategoryProgrammingLanguage