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

[=?GB2312?B?0KXIuw==?=]

>I thought a lot about this, because I really like Smalltalk and cannot
>understand why so many others don't see in it the beauty I see.
>Unfortunately, I did not come to any *serious* conclusion.
>Most new languages keep taking ideas from Smalltalk, but as you say,
>Smalltalk is really far from being widely accepted.

Smalltalk is a wonderful language which influenced software developing
gravely.
1. GUI -> MacOS, m$ Windows, X Windows....
2. OOP -> Self, Java, Python, Ruby......

I think the thought of Smalltalk should be the right way of developing
software.

>Some of the important issues, probably are:
>
>1.  The environment.
>Most programmers just don't get used to this.  They feel as being
>tightly coupled to a feature that, for them, should be decoupled.
>This probably holds "some" truth, since being as it is, smalltalk has
>to do a lot of things that are typically an OS responsibility.  OSs
>are usually more mature and resolve very well a lot of things.
>The other drawback that most programmers see in using smalltalk with
>its environment is that the GUI is not integrated to the OS GUI.  This
>is not true, particularly if you use some of the commercial Smalltalk
>dialects that support it, but again, most programmers I know don't
>know about this.  They always think of Smalltalk with it's
>environment.  Most of them even think that you can't even build a
>server that runs without the GUI (headless).
>So, a lot of this might be due to disinformation

It's looks more like a OS that Smalltalk has it's own environment.
But, an OS creator would not like to see an "OS" in his OS.
So, Smalltalk itself should be an OS, not only a language.

>2. Openness
>For a language to be successful today, it has to be open,
>distributable and then accepted by "the community".  This is the case
>of Python, Ruby, etc.  Java is seriously suffering from not being
>open, and now, they will probably open it.
>I have not followed it closely, but I believe Squeak had some
>licencing issues until not so long ago, and the other free Smalltalks
>(GNU) are not as good as Squeak.

Squeak is open source for several years, but the situation has not changed
so much.

>Probably the list is longer, and everyone may not agree with me on those
issues.
>What I sadly believe by now is that, if Smalltalk didn't make it in
>the last 25 years, it will not make it in the future. There is no
>reason for this to change, I believe that smalltalk has not had many
>substantial changes in the last decade).
>So my plan is sticking to this small but talented and friendly
>community :)  I don't think it is going to change a lot.
>The biggest risk of having a small community (squeak), probably, is
>that guys who really know Squeak, which are a few, might get tired of
>hacking enormous amounts of hours for it to evolve little by little,
>for the rest of the fellows.
>For me, Squeak evolves a lot, but it is still a little/slow evolution.
> This is also a consequence of the small community.  If you see
>squeak's GUI and dev tools (editors, debugger, etc.) they really look
>at least a decade old, and are behind the tools available for other
>languages.  This might also be an issue about the little acceptance.
>Just my 2 cents.
>Bye

Maybe it's a way that let Smalltalk to be an OS which not base on the
concept of OS in existence.

Smalltalk put all things into one image file, so it needn't "include",
"import", or "use" instruction.

I imagine such a Smalltalk OS:
1.  Creat a file system for this OS according to Smalltalk class structure(
a tree ), it could be called "OOFS",
and divide up the image file to small block( a bytecode file, like an exe
file) which belong a class.
Load a block file when our programs need, instead of load one image file at
bootup time.
2. Improve the memory management of Smalltalk (GC), so that it could deal
with the realtime requiring.

This is my jejune idea.

Xiaoran


ÔÚ06-8-9£¬Ramiro Diaz Trepat <ramirodt at gmail.com> дµÀ£º
>
> I thought a lot about this, because I really like Smalltalk and cannot
> understand why so many others don't see in it the beauty I see.
> Unfortunately, I did not come to any *serious* conclusion.
> Most new languages keep taking ideas from Smalltalk, but as you say,
> Smalltalk is really far from being widely accepted.
>
> Some of the important issues, probably are:
>
> 1.  The environment.
> Most programmers just don't get used to this.  They feel as being
> tightly coupled to a feature that, for them, should be decoupled.
> This probably holds "some" truth, since being as it is, smalltalk has
> to do a lot of things that are typically an OS responsibility.  OSs
> are usually more mature and resolve very well a lot of things.
> The other drawback that most programmers see in using smalltalk with
> its environment is that the GUI is not integrated to the OS GUI.  This
> is not true, particularly if you use some of the commercial Smalltalk
> dialects that support it, but again, most programmers I know don't
> know about this.  They always think of Smalltalk with it's
> environment.  Most of them even think that you can't even build a
> server that runs without the GUI (headless).
> So, a lot of this might be due to disinformation
>
> 2. Openness
> For a language to be successful today, it has to be open,
> distributable and then accepted by "the community".  This is the case
> of Python, Ruby, etc.  Java is seriously suffering from not being
> open, and now, they will probably open it.
> I have not followed it closely, but I believe Squeak had some
> licencing issues until not so long ago, and the other free Smalltalks
> (GNU) are not as good as Squeak.
>
> Probably the list is longer, and everyone may not agree with me on those
> issues.
> What I sadly believe by now is that, if Smalltalk didn't make it in
> the last 25 years, it will not make it in the future. There is no
> reason for this to change, I believe that smalltalk has not had many
> substantial changes in the last decade).
> So my plan is sticking to this small but talented and friendly
> community :)  I don't think it is going to change a lot.
> The biggest risk of having a small community (squeak), probably, is
> that guys who really know Squeak, which are a few, might get tired of
> hacking enormous amounts of hours for it to evolve little by little,
> for the rest of the fellows.
> For me, Squeak evolves a lot, but it is still a little/slow evolution.
> This is also a consequence of the small community.  If you see
> squeak's GUI and dev tools (editors, debugger, etc.) they really look
> at least a decade old, and are behind the tools available for other
> languages.  This might also be an issue about the little acceptance.
> Just my 2 cents.
> Bye
>
>
> r.
>
>
> On 8/8/06, ХȻ <simbba at gmail.com> wrote:
> > My opinion is, the power of Smalltalk is same as an OS, but Smalltalk is
> as
> > a programming language. The Smalltalk should be an OS.
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Beginners at lists.squeakfoundation.org
> > http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners
> >
> >
> >
>
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