Alan Grimes wrote:
> 
> Even though this list is populated by the coolest people in the
> industry,
> I have decided to take myself off this list because I am overwhealmed by
> trafic.

Sorry to see someone go, but this is a busy list. :)

> I have determined that Squeak is not appropriate for my needs at this
> time despite being a fairly impressive system. Squeak seems to focus on
> being a very practcal language and not worry too much about more arcane
> computer science concerns such as language safety and strong typing.

Just wanted to comment that I don't really agree with this statement.

By strong typing I think you mean "static" typing, such as with C, C++, Pascal, Java, etc., in which all variable declarations need to have a type associated with them in the source code.    Some people tend to use the term strong typing for this, but that's not really the right term.  Squeak, along with Lisp, Python, Ruby, etc., use "dynamic" typing instead.

In any case, I wouldn't consider static typing an arcane computer science concern at all... most of the more popular languages these days use static typing.

In fact, I'd say the opposite of your statement is true, that the Squeak crowd tends to include more computer-science-y folks than most other languages, and relatively fewer whatever-it-takes-to-get-the-job-done "practical" people.  (Perhaps generalizing a bit here.  But some people occasionally complain that Squeak is too research-oriented.)  Squeak is very practical for some types of things, though, of course.

> As
> these features take center stage in my attempts at OS-implementation
> squeak becomes a less interesting option.

Understandable, from what I remember of what you were trying to achieve.  Good luck,

- Doug Way
  dway at riskmetrics.com


> Should my OS achieve the dream of world domination, I would eagerly
> support a safe version of the squeak system. In the mean time, I need to
> de-clutter my mailbox.
> 
> --
> Waiting for a typical DOS application to crash is like waiting for hell
> to freeze over.
> http://users.erols.com/alangrimes/  <my website.