Article in Wired

Dino gte949e at prism.gatech.edu
Tue Jun 8 06:12:04 UTC 1999


Bijan Parsia wrote:
<
> I don't understand what you're talking about. An example of this problem and
> how it's due to dynamic binding and how it's not addressed by current tools

Dynamic binding....  compiler does not care what the type of a variable is
until runtime.  Unlike other languages, Squeak has generic types which can
be good in some ways since the same variable can be an object in one time
and then a different object another time, but to the user it may be
difficult to determine what kind of variable it is.  This problem was
brought up earlier by Ivan Brusic.

> > sifting through source code to find what they want.  That's one reason so
> > few people even give Squeak a chance.
> 
> This I really, really, really must protest. What makes you think that it's
> "so few" rather
> than "so many" who even give Squeak a chance? I think the Squeak community
> is vibrant, growing, and, in general, doing rather well.

Doing well is one's own opinion.  If you think a few thousand are doing
Squeak is well, then that's fine, but my feeling of doing well is everyone
doing Squeak.  I asked a Junior level CS major at UIUC (the university of
this mailing list) and he did not even know what Squeak was....  but he
knew what Java was.  Doing well is having vast amounts of documentation and
just about everything under the sun implemented in the language.  Why do
something complex in C when it already exists in Java?  Why do something
complex in Java if it already existed in Squeak?

> As for documentation, there *is* documentation available for large chunks
> of the
> Squeak system. The Blue & Purple books do a fairly decent job. Inside

I'm sorry, I must strongly disagree with you on this one.  Many agree with
me that there is a necessity for a central Squeak documentation source. 
Squeak currently is developed in a Bazaar fashion just like many "open
source" projects out there, whereas Java is developed in a more Cathedral
like fashion.  Java has an edge because there is a central location for
help, documentation and resources.  Squeak may have a lot of resources but
they are widely scattered about the web.  Just imagine yourself trying to
find one particular page in the huge Swiki at minnow.cc.gatech.edu!!!

> Yet another call for documentation (as opposed to *providing*
> documentation) isn't
> telling anyone anything new.

Well at least I'm trying.  You could give us a hand couldn't you?  If we
had a central resource for documentation, more people could criticize and
add to the pages, but it is difficult to criticize or add pages to
documentation that is scattered about the web and has no central theme.

> >  A language with dynamic binding and
> > no documentation is like trying to find a colored needle in a haystack
> > without knowing what color you're looking for.
> 
> Again, I don't know what this means. I found the tools for navigating

Check out a good book on programming languages....  dynamic and static
binding...  they describe the problem in great detail.  I'd rather not type
my book in here.  :)

One problem with most users is the fixation and love for a particular
subject.  People who think Linux is the best of all OSes out there fail to
see the problems with Linux has and can't stop advocating the use of
Linux.  I was once this person.  I feel Squeakers are the same way....
sometimes you have to step back and pretend you don't know what Squeak is
and criticize its failures.  Mac users also tend to have this
can't-see-failures problem when they blindly advocate the operating
system.  I'm not saying anyone here is blindly advocating anything, I just
feel that we tend to have a fault that we have difficulty admitting which I
am also guilty of such.

-- Dino





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