2010/6/20 Igor Stasenko <siguctua at gmail.com>:
> http://therighttool.hammerprinciple.com/items/smalltalk
>
> I think this could be used as a good guide for us to make an effort to
> move some low-ranked items
> into a high ranked ones :)
>
>

Oh, I first misunderstood the double negations in the right column.
(i.e. it's not unusually bad for beginners).

About 8) :  True, every single operation results in memory allocation
/ garbage collection, a burden for number crunching.
But iIf you think of it, the very same argument apply to Matlab,
because the interpreter is awfully slow (last time I checked, about 5
times slower than 32 bits VW !).
So the well known answer is to provide a good library to vectorize
operations (kind of BLAS + LAPACK).
There is also the possibility to reduce memory allocation pressure by
using immediate values (like VW SmallDouble). It will never compete
with C/FORTRAN, but user feeling may vary a bit on 64bit
architectures.

My own answer was: use C/FORTRAN for optimized number crunching
functions. Use Smalltalk for any higher level/GUI function (via
DLLCC/FFI). We may have more than 1 hammer in your toolset!

Nicolas

> --
> Best regards,
> Igor Stasenko AKA sig.
>
>