Modular Squeak

Stephen Pair spair at advantive.com
Fri Sep 22 19:37:59 UTC 2000


Probably everyone agrees that getting to a more modular Squeak is absolutely
essential in accomplishing many of the things mentioned in the recent thread
on Python at Disney.

It's not that implementing a "CGI/FastCGI/ISAPI/ASP/whatever" interface for
Squeak is not doable...it's very doable.  It's not even hard, just time
consuming.  However, as soon as you implement one of these interfaces, the
issues regarding modularity become immediately apparent.  In addition, for
most people on this list, a fast socket implementation and robust protocol
support is a better way to go than plugging in behind a web server.

But, that's not the way the majority of developers out there think.  They
think in terms of CGI and ASP/JSP.  What's more, they think it's impossible
that anything (especially Squeak) could serve web applications as fast as
Apache or IIS.  So, I think it would be great (and useful for the right
applications) to have these interfaces available in Squeak (I mean, why
not?).  It would certainly lower the learning curve for a lot of developers
using those other technologies.  And that definitely won't hurt when one is
trying to get Squeak accepted.

Of course, I realize that none of this is all that important to the
essential research that is taking place at SqC.  And it shouldn't be.  There
is a well defined path of research that SqC seems to be heading, and dealing
with these issues would only be tangentially interesting at best, and
completely distracting at worst.

I do think that SqC is very aware of the many benefits to be had by making
the image more modular.  It enables code to age more gracefully, reduces
version skewing, enables better memory management, enables a more immersive
web experience with projects on the net, and yes, it enables Squeak to look
more like traditional development tools.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that modularity should be a high
priority.

- Stephen






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