Reminder: Ottawa Carleton Smalltalk Users Group meeting Oct 3

Hans-Martin Mosner squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
Mon Sep 30 20:50:29 UTC 2002


Alan Kay wrote:

> It would be great for someone to do Elastolab in Squeak!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Alan

True - but on the other hand I wish that David's work is an economic success,
too. Smalltalk needs to be a commercially viable platform, not just a great
toolbox and environment for thinkers and tinkerers. I and many others who
don't want to succumb to the dark side (I won't mention that dreaded J-word
here) depend on Smalltalk jobs which pay. And there are quite some who don't
have such jobs, sadly. That should not discourage anyone from trying to do
physics simulation stuff in Squeak to provide such a framework for free -
however just copying ElastoLab does not smell right to me.

As far as Windows-only is concerned, VisualWorks comes from the same breed as
Squeak, and is binary portable to platforms such as Linux and Mac, too. I
don't know how deeply integrated with Windows ElastoLab actually is, but it
should be possible to make a Mac or Linux port with a reasonable amount of
effort. Doing Windows first is a reasonable economic decision (most kids with
computers will have Wintel stuff on their desks), but following up with Mac
and Linux would clearly demonstrate that Smalltalk is the "true" write once,
run everywhere language :-)

Cheers,
Hans-Martin




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