[squeak-dev] what is holding back Smalltalk?
Claus Kick
claus_kick at web.de
Fri Nov 21 18:23:04 UTC 2008
Mark Volkmann wrote:
> On Nov 20, 2008, at 5:28 PM, David Mitchell wrote:
>
>> Most of the things that make Smalltalk great (what makes Smalltalk
>> Smalltalk) are the things that hold it back for a lot of people.
>
>
> Maybe I'm naive on this, but it seems like it should be easy convince
> lots of people that Smalltalk has a beautiful syntax and a wonderful
> development environment.
No it is not, most people will ask, "where are my {};".
>> If you want a more Unixy, scripty, Smalltalkish thing with syntax
>> blended C and Perl that you can hack with a text editor, try Ruby.
> I think this depends on how we define "scripty". I take that to mean
> quick, short, one off programs. I personally use Ruby for that today.
<aside>For me, thats Perl</aside>
> However, I'd like to be able to use Squeak when things get a little
> bigger. For example, suppose I want to run an application every night
> that queries a database, produces some text report and emails it to
> several people.
Honestly, thats Perl for me, too, hence scripting.
>I don't see any reason why those kinds of applications
> should be difficult to write and deploy using Squeak, but they seem
> pretty difficult to me today because I can't get the headless stuff to
> work.
I agree with you there, it is not really difficult. The headless issue
however, might just be a minor Squeak problem, thats not really a
Smalltalk issue.
What I use(d) Smalltalk for, was mostly GUI stuff (though I use SWT for
that nowadays, at work at least) and applications having a large domain
model behind. That is what you can use a high level language like
Smalltalk for, in my opinion that is what it was meant for. I have done
my fair share of "Scripting" in Smalltalk, and it is a pain when
compared to the close integration of Perl with the OS APIs (especially
on Unix).
What is holding Smalltalk back then (train of thought order only)?
- In my opinion, in part, licensing models
- the crud which is called VB which is used to implement actual applications
- the absence of a standard Smalltalk with a standard class hierarchy
- Java and C# due to their huge amount of both useful and useless frameworks
- Almost no one teaches Smalltalk (I was among the last of my university
who learned Smalltalk)
Just my two cents.
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