Alan Kay wrote:
It would be great for someone to do Elastolab in Squeak!
Cheers,
Alan
True - but on the other hand I wish that David's work is an economic success, too. Smalltalk needs to be a commercially viable platform, not just a great toolbox and environment for thinkers and tinkerers. I and many others who don't want to succumb to the dark side (I won't mention that dreaded J-word here) depend on Smalltalk jobs which pay. And there are quite some who don't have such jobs, sadly. That should not discourage anyone from trying to do physics simulation stuff in Squeak to provide such a framework for free - however just copying ElastoLab does not smell right to me.
As far as Windows-only is concerned, VisualWorks comes from the same breed as Squeak, and is binary portable to platforms such as Linux and Mac, too. I don't know how deeply integrated with Windows ElastoLab actually is, but it should be possible to make a Mac or Linux port with a reasonable amount of effort. Doing Windows first is a reasonable economic decision (most kids with computers will have Wintel stuff on their desks), but following up with Mac and Linux would clearly demonstrate that Smalltalk is the "true" write once, run everywhere language :-)
Cheers, Hans-Martin