Brad,
I want to "perpetuate" vertical apps because my users need them and therefore I need to create them. Communicating between them can be as simple as using sockets. Given that I have apps (vertical or otherwise) on geographically separated machines, that's pretty much a wash anyway. BTW, I get more than prototyping: I get the ability to profile/refactor/iterate until I have something that frequently out-performs a mainstream effort, and I get an OO system that can "tell me where it hurts" any time an error occurs. That's a lot of bang for the user's buck.
In summary, I want to use Smalltalk, and like it or not, I will run on top of things like Windows, Mac OS or Linux for a long time to come. The question is whether or not Squeak is a candidate development platform.
We seem to agree (to put it mildly<g>) about the level of cleanup that should occur in moving to 3.10. That's a start.
Bill
Brad Fuller brad at bradfuller.com Sun Feb 4 02:09:16 UTC 2007
I continue to think the community is really missing the point on a few fundamental topics. Some think the only route to success is to get developers to use Squeak to churn out native-widget apps for end
users;
others fire back with things like there should be no OS, no difference between users and developers, and other idealistic beliefs. All are bickering, to the detriment of Squeak.
Gee... I haven't seen any bickering. I think the arguments have been fruitful and interesting.
Our goal should be to collaborate on making both approaches, and
others,
possible!
Why would one want to continue to perpetuate the development of vertical
applications - of which it is difficult to communicate between (except w/o even more vertical methods of communicating)? I see only one advantage of developing OS-native apps in Squeak and that's Smalltalk's prototyping ability. A capability that you can also get with other languages. Unfortunately, the user misses the true power of the Smalltalk environment.
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The modularization effort provides a wonderful opportunity to give Squeak a frame-up restoration for 3.10 and beyond. I continue to
hope
that we will take a collective deep breath and clean up the modules as they go into the next image; now is the time.
Amen
Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D. University of Florida Department of Anesthesiology PO Box 100254 Gainesville, FL 32610-0254
Email: bills@anest4.anest.ufl.edu Tel: (352) 846-1285 FAX: (352) 392-7029
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