Smalltalk: Requiem or Resurgence? {Dr. Dobb's Journal (05/06/06) Chan, Jeremy}

Marten Feldtmann m.feldtmann at t-online.de
Thu May 11 09:37:15 UTC 2006


Klaus D. Witzel schrieb:

> Hi Marten,
>
> on Thu, 11 May 2006 08:59:04 +0200, you <m.feldtmann at t-online.de> wrote:
>
>>   Another little chance for Smalltalk (again ...) could be a reborn of
>> dynamically typed languages. I've heard a presentation about what
>> programming languages are missing today and in the future and one of
>> the major points was: meta programming facility. This does not mean
>> reflection as available in .NET or Java - but the powerful systems of
>> LISP and Smalltalk. Signals in this direction comes from some IBM
>> research laboratories and from the .net group from Microsoft.
>
>
> And from Sun, see "Constructing a metacircular Virtual machine in an  
> exploratory programming environment"
> - http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1094865

 Nice to see ! More of these publications and somewhere in
the future a company will create a new language - perhaps
containing all needed stuff.

 But I also think that this new kind of programming will
have to fight against the installed user (=programmer)
base, which I think is not ready for that at all.

 The presentation I mentioned also have some other
points for a "better" language:

 - source code repository (instead of simple file
   management). ENVY was mentioned in this point.

 - a mixture of contract and interface design

 - the possibility to use "static typing" in useful
   places (e.g. on module borders) only.

 - constraints ....

 - source code (when needed at all) has to have all
   the specification of one program (and not only
   as remarks).

 - perhaps leaving source code at all - http://subtextual.org/
   was mentioned as an example.

 - the possibility to include other languages (DSL) within
   one system/solution (.NET, Prolog/ST-V)


-- 
Marten Feldtmann - Germany - Software Development
Information regarding VA Smalltalk and DMS-system
"MSK - Mien Schrievkrom" at: www.schrievkrom.de





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