Igor Stasenko wrote:
> I think that one of the major drawbacks of smalltalk is its 80's
> implementation which offers 0 (zero) modularity.
> A smalltalk image is a universe, which contains everything. It can't
> be split on parts, you can't manage these parts to load/unload on
> demand. Everything is tightly welded together and sometimes, even if
> you want to get rid of some stuff - its very hard to do. Its like a
> painting ink - once you stepped into it once - you start leaving
> footprints everywhere.
> Its very good from one side, but not always: for a people working in
> contaminated areas, they need to pass a clean-up procedures to reduce
> the risk of bringing unwanted stuff into that environment.
> In smalltalk there is no such contaminated areas - you free to go
> everywhere and leave your footprints. Who cares? :)
> This is the problem: if people don't have a discipline and leaving
> stuff everywhere they think it good to be, then at the end we got a
> complete mess, no structure, no organization, just a half-working
> pieces spreaded across many places.
>
> Also, even if organized well, projects can't grow bigger than certain
> amount, and at some point they become unmanageable, simply because no
> single man can hold so much information in his head to understand it
> and make some progress with it.
> At some point, you have to split your project on separate parts and
> delegate your work to other people. And also, make sure that these
> parts can evolve more or less independently.
> This is where fun begins: a smalltalk inherent implementation lacks
> modularity and offers nothing to you how to break things apart without
> losing consistency.
> Instead, it makes you addict in using globals everywhere and be
> careless about future :)
>
> Another analogue: kids playing with lego puzzle. One kid puts one
> piece on top of another, then second puts some more pieces on top of
> it, and so on, then another kid came and realizes that if he replace
> the piece inside a construction it would be much more elegant. But at
> first attempt when he tries that, he breaks the whole construction :)
>
> I hoping this will change in near future.  Smalltalk syntax is the
> simplest and most powerful syntax i met.
>
>
>
>   
+ 1

Karl