Squeak in Dr Dobbs

Samuel S. Shuster sames at interaccess.com
Sun Nov 29 19:22:20 UTC 1998


Dear Friends,

  This past week I got my January issue of Dr. Dobbs (yes, one of the few hard
core mags still around that doesn't have it's head up some language's behind),
and, as usual, I sat down to read Michael Swaine's column, and what do you
know... he talks about Squeak! About 1/2 the column!

  The article seemed to have a fair idea about Squeak, although he seemed to
have no idea about the current state of Smalltalk. I was a bit surprised to get
the impression that he didn't really know Smalltalk too much, but I guess no one
can know everything.

  As to the current state of Smalltalk, he talks about how Squeak will be hard
to make any inroads against C++ or Java. As if Squeak was somehow synonymous
with Smalltalk... I'd go as far as to say the tone of the article was that
Smalltalk has somehow become Squeak.

  I find that very unfortunate. As we all know, Squeak is to Smalltalk what
Linux is to Unix, and no more has all of Unix become Linux than all of Smalltalk
become Squeak. Which is not to say I have a problem with either Squeak or Linux.
It's just that, oh, I don't know, It's just that I find it unfortunate that
Squeak has, in this one case, as narrow as it may be, somehow occluded the
demonstrable  advances and successes of Smalltalk over the decades.

                                And So It Goes
                                     Sames

============================================================================
Samuel S. Shuster
Continuum Methods & Frameworks, Inc.
Go Smalltalk!





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