Herein are some wandering thoughts - no proposals, suggestions or drafts
-, but I think there is one highlight:
What do you think of 'RIDE' as shortcut for 'real IDE'?

Squeak is a RIDE...

Duane Maxwell wrote:
> 
> Ali Chamas writes:
> >I'm assuming a lot of the Squeak community is
> >business-application oriented, and may not see the
> >same potential of having Squeak running on such mass
> >marketed consoles as i most certainly do!!
> >Creative game developers need good tools to work with,
> >less crap to deal with (hardware, OS), and more
> >freedom to prove their artistic ability. The answer is
> >Squeak.
> 
> I'm not sure I agree that this community is fundamentally
> business-oriented, although there is that contingent.  I would instead
> characterize it as attempting to build the most sublime development
> environment, in which apps from games to business applications can be
> quickly and relatively painlessly written.  All too often we find ourselves
> fighting our tools instead of solving the problem of the moment

I've made this experience, too...

> and Squeak
> alleviates this admirably.

I think there are some stones in the way yet, but at least it is on a
good way to a real 'industrial strength' IDE.
BTW: I know so called 'industrial strength' IDEs, which I wouldn't call
so...

> In the past I've found myself not following
> through on an interesting idea in a conventional development environment,
> but with Squeak I just sit down and knock it out, and the time to a
> tangible result is vastly shortened.

This is also true for other Smalltalks: e.g. I have made my diploma
thesis with much prototypical work with VisualWorks.

After that I've made industrial projects (surface inspection) with
VC++6.0 and now I'm very happy to work with Squeak. C/C++ is very good
for speed, of course; but for trying this and that and get an
understanding of the system as whole a RIDE (Real IDE) with Smalltalk
like Squeak is the right choice. If you need speed, you are able to
write a plugin or to call external C-functions.

It is possible to write good code in C++, but it is really difficult to
govern its complexity. C++ has advantages over C, if you are disciplined
and have gained enough experience to choose the best language constructs
for the concrete problem and know how to apply them correctly.
With Smalltalk there are almost no problems with the language, because
it is simple. You don't fight with syntax or semantic issues. You are
mainly thinking about
- how to use existing code,
- concepts,
- design,
- how to model,
etc.. In C++ there are these problems, but *also* such questions as
- Has it to be a 'virtual destructor' or not?
- Operator precedence?
- Which 'template specialization' applies?
- Which 'header files' are included at this point of the code (means
which symbols are known here)?
- What does this compiler error means?
- Where is the memory leak?
...

I'm passionate out of my experience here; others may have other
opinions: I don't want to start a language war here!

Moreover I know that there are many greys, not just white and black.


Another area is GUI programming: I don't like the VC++6.0 'approach'
(though it is surely much better than its predecessors) or Tcl/Tk
(didn't do it, but own a book about).
I only know the VW GUI-builder, which was good for fast development of
standard GUIs with 'boring' widgets.
But how to connect GUIs and its models together with glue and good tools
for this work, is and should be (!) an ongoing area of research. I hope,
that some day an easy to understand and flexible variant is available
(Morphic in later versions?).

> 
> As far as game development is concerned, I guess it depends upon the game
> you're trying to write.  We're not ready to handle Quake, but there are
> other opportunities for games that are algorithmically interesting, but not
> performance junkies, that Squeak would be nice for - which is why I think
> we'll likely see more card, board and strategy games than first person
> shooters.
> 

My goal for the nearer future is to use Squeak for Go-programming: Go is
an Asian strategy board game with a higher complexity as chess. Moreover
there aren't any Go-programs playing with master strength now...

Greetings,

Stephan

> ===================================================
> Duane Maxwell          dmaxwell (at) entrypoint.com
> CTO                       http://www.entrypoint.com
> EntryPoint, Inc.    (858)348-3040  FAX(858)348-3100
> 
> Information contained herein is my personal opinion
>      and not necessarily that of EntryPoint.
> ===================================================

-- 
Stephan Rudlof (sr at evolgo.de)
   "Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis.
    You can't simply say, 'Today I will be brilliant.'"
    -- Kirk, "The Ultimate Computer", stardate 4731.3