[Newbies] Why hasn't Smalltalk been wildly accepted?

[keith hodges]

Indeed, in ST/X it is possible to write a method in C and have it 
dynamically compiled an loaded into the running image. There is your 
"compilation unit", albeit at a smaller level of granularity than most 
are used to; the rest of the image is "runtime-engine".

I think that 10 years ago people sneared at runtime libraries over 1Mb, 
now with average user software like Mozilla which include 
"images/vms/runtimes/memory managers" of their own, I think that the 
concept is more acceptable.

It seems to me that the acceptability criteria appears to be related to 
operating system integration. If microsoft adds a vm runtime engine to 
the OS, then it gains instant acceptability. Java promised the same. 
Smalltalkers tend to ignore the OS for the most part, which does not 
endear the faithful Microsoft Certified Professional. (But it does make 
for robust code if the VM is robust... now that should have been the 
killer selling point on Windows for sure!)

Again in ST/X, if you want to you can manage all of your code as source 
in CVS and have it compiled and load on start up into a running 
application, without an image per se. All things are possible. But who 
knows about these things, not every IT professional has time to try 
these things out, which is where I think the books come in. I wonder how 
many armchair java programmers there are?

Keith
> The image... *that* I could not fully convince them of so far. Maybe
> it's my fault. If anybody has a great convincing collection of slides,
> I'd love to see it. - Anyway, I have the feeling that what they
> disliked most about it was that the concept of "compilation unit" or
> "unit of execution" is not as definite as in, say, Java, which they
> know better.
>
> Best,
>
> Michael
> _


	
	
		
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