On Mon, 28 Jan 2002, Yoel Jacobsen wrote:

> Andrew,
>    
>     Thank you for your reply.
>    
>     However, this only proves my point - your application fits perfectly 
> into 'playing with ideas'. Have you ever tried to open 2GB database in 
> squeak and make automatic analysis of the data? Another application I 
> needed - construction of LDIF files for customer's existing data 
> sources. It worked, but it was very slow and the image was not fun to 
> touch in the (long) time it ran.

So, Squeak doesn't fit your *particular* needs. I'm sorry, but as Stef
pointed out there are *loads* of Smalltalks, all with different strengths
and weaknesses.

>     I don't say I don't like Squeak. I liked it a lot. I just feel it 
> could be more suited to my type of 'real world problems'.

Sure. But that doesn't mean it's impractical. If you'd said, "I have these
specific needs, how can I meet them better with Squeak" that'd be
different.

I do a bunch of programming in both Squeak and Python for practical little
tasks. I tend to prefer Squeak, though i sometimes wish I had some module
from Python. Except that when I try to use *many* of the Python modules, I
find them broken, illdocumented, ill suited to my needs, or just
frustrating (the XML stuff, in particular, really bit me hard
recently). And if I have to massage something, I'd *much* rather do it in
Squeak (or another smalltalk). (Or heck, a common lisp, and I'm just
starting that :))

> On the other 
> way you can claim that my feeling is based on the fact that I know 
> Python better and longer. This might be true. What I wanted is to know 
> on what extent the readers of this group do I/O and memory intensive 
> tasks with Squeak.

Well, memory intensive stuff, sure, I guess. Perhaps you could get more
traction if you posted a problem you could handle with ease in Python
(with the Python solution) and see what we can come up with. These
discussion work *much* better if there's a specific focus.

Working on Scott's FullText stuff makes clear that Squeak is *not*
optimized for certain tasks, but also that it's not too difficult to *get*
it doing much better.

>     I don't think this discussion is a troll, though.

The discussion, no. You're initial post, maybe a little :) Or, at least,
easily mistaken for one.

Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.