>I thought a lot about this, because I really like Smalltalk and cannot<br>>understand why so many others don't see in it the beauty I see.<br>>Unfortunately, I did not come to any *serious* conclusion.<br>>Most new languages keep taking ideas from Smalltalk, but as you say,
<br>>Smalltalk is really far from being widely accepted.<br><br>Smalltalk is a wonderful language which influenced software developing gravely.<br>1. GUI -> MacOS, m$ Windows, X Windows....<br>2. OOP -> Self, Java, Python, Ruby......
<br><br>I think the thought of Smalltalk should be the right way of developing software.<br><br>>Some of the important issues, probably are:<br>><br>>1. The environment.<br>>Most programmers just don't get used to this. They feel as being
<br>>tightly coupled to a feature that, for them, should be decoupled.<br>>This probably holds "some" truth, since being as it is, smalltalk has<br>>to do a lot of things that are typically an OS responsibility. OSs
<br>>are usually more mature and resolve very well a lot of things.<br>>The other drawback that most programmers see in using smalltalk with<br>>its environment is that the GUI is not integrated to the OS GUI. This
<br>>is not true, particularly if you use some of the commercial Smalltalk<br>>dialects that support it, but again, most programmers I know don't<br>>know about this. They always think of Smalltalk with it's<br>
>environment. Most of them even think that you can't even build a<br>>server that runs without the GUI (headless).<br>>So, a lot of this might be due to disinformation<br><br>It's looks more like a OS that Smalltalk has it's own environment.
<br>But, an OS creator would not like to see an "OS" in his OS.<br>So, Smalltalk itself should be an OS, not only a language.<br><br>>2. Openness<br>>For a language to be successful today, it has to be open,
<br>>distributable and then accepted by "the community". This is the case<br>>of Python, Ruby, etc. Java is seriously suffering from not being<br>>open, and now, they will probably open it.<br>>I have not followed it closely, but I believe Squeak had some
<br>>licencing issues until not so long ago, and the other free Smalltalks<br>>(GNU) are not as good as Squeak.<br><br>Squeak is open source for several years, but the situation has not changed so much.<br><br>>Probably the list is longer, and everyone may not agree with me on those issues.
<br>>What I sadly believe by now is that, if Smalltalk didn't make it in<br>>the last 25 years, it will not make it in the future. There is no<br>>reason for this to change, I believe that smalltalk has not had many
<br>>substantial changes in the last decade).<br>>So my plan is sticking to this small but talented and friendly<br>>community :) I don't think it is going to change a lot.<br>>The biggest risk of having a small community (squeak), probably, is
<br>>that guys who really know Squeak, which are a few, might get tired of<br>>hacking enormous amounts of hours for it to evolve little by little,<br>>for the rest of the fellows.<br>>For me, Squeak evolves a lot, but it is still a little/slow evolution.
<br>> This is also a consequence of the small community. If you see<br>>squeak's GUI and dev tools (editors, debugger, etc.) they really look<br>>at least a decade old, and are behind the tools available for other
<br>>languages. This might also be an issue about the little acceptance.<br>>Just my 2 cents.<br>>Bye<br><br>Maybe it's a way that let Smalltalk to be an OS which not base on the concept of OS in existence.<br><br>
Smalltalk put all things into one image file, so it needn't "include", "import", or "use" instruction.<br><br>I imagine such a Smalltalk OS:<br>1. Creat a file system for this OS according to Smalltalk class structure( a tree ), it could be called "OOFS",
<br>and divide up the image file to small block( a bytecode file, like an exe file) which belong a class.<br>Load a block file when our programs need, instead of load one image file at bootup time.<br>2. Improve the memory management of Smalltalk (GC), so that it could deal with the realtime requiring.
<br><br>This is my jejune idea.<br><br>Xiaoran<br><br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">ÔÚ06-8-9£¬<b class="gmail_sendername">Ramiro Diaz Trepat</b> <<a href="mailto:ramirodt@gmail.com">ramirodt@gmail.com</a>> дµÀ£º</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">I thought a lot about this, because I really like Smalltalk and cannot<br>understand why so many others don't see in it the beauty I see.
<br>Unfortunately, I did not come to any *serious* conclusion.<br>Most new languages keep taking ideas from Smalltalk, but as you say,<br>Smalltalk is really far from being widely accepted.<br><br>Some of the important issues, probably are:
<br><br>1. The environment.<br>Most programmers just don't get used to this. They feel as being<br>tightly coupled to a feature that, for them, should be decoupled.<br>This probably holds "some" truth, since being as it is, smalltalk has
<br>to do a lot of things that are typically an OS responsibility. OSs<br>are usually more mature and resolve very well a lot of things.<br>The other drawback that most programmers see in using smalltalk with<br>its environment is that the GUI is not integrated to the OS GUI. This
<br>is not true, particularly if you use some of the commercial Smalltalk<br>dialects that support it, but again, most programmers I know don't<br>know about this. They always think of Smalltalk with it's<br>environment. Most of them even think that you can't even build a
<br>server that runs without the GUI (headless).<br>So, a lot of this might be due to disinformation<br><br>2. Openness<br>For a language to be successful today, it has to be open,<br>distributable and then accepted by "the community". This is the case
<br>of Python, Ruby, etc. Java is seriously suffering from not being<br>open, and now, they will probably open it.<br>I have not followed it closely, but I believe Squeak had some<br>licencing issues until not so long ago, and the other free Smalltalks
<br>(GNU) are not as good as Squeak.<br><br>Probably the list is longer, and everyone may not agree with me on those issues.<br>What I sadly believe by now is that, if Smalltalk didn't make it in<br>the last 25 years, it will not make it in the future. There is no
<br>reason for this to change, I believe that smalltalk has not had many<br>substantial changes in the last decade).<br>So my plan is sticking to this small but talented and friendly<br>community :) I don't think it is going to change a lot.
<br>The biggest risk of having a small community (squeak), probably, is<br>that guys who really know Squeak, which are a few, might get tired of<br>hacking enormous amounts of hours for it to evolve little by little,<br>for the rest of the fellows.
<br>For me, Squeak evolves a lot, but it is still a little/slow evolution.<br> This is also a consequence of the small community. If you see<br>squeak's GUI and dev tools (editors, debugger, etc.) they really look<br>at least a decade old, and are behind the tools available for other
<br>languages. This might also be an issue about the little acceptance.<br>Just my 2 cents.<br>Bye<br><br><br>r.<br><br><br>On 8/8/06, ХȻ <<a href="mailto:simbba@gmail.com">simbba@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>> My opinion is, the power of Smalltalk is same as an OS, but Smalltalk is as
<br>> a programming language. The Smalltalk should be an OS.<br>> _______________________________________________<br>> Beginners mailing list<br>> <a href="mailto:Beginners@lists.squeakfoundation.org">Beginners@lists.squeakfoundation.org
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