Have you really looked at Smalltalk-72? Do you think that you could build a real system with each class been able to define its own syntax? It depends what is the goal of the language. If this is to build application it seems that ST-80 is better than 72. At least with my taste.
Stef
I have a feeling that to many Smalltakers, in general, there
have been no advances in software engineering and computer language design since Smalltalk was invented.
When was Smalltalk really invented? Was it in 1972 or 1976 or 1980? Did Squeak Central insist on creating things that are worse than Smalltalk-72 and the crowd assumed that it is automatically better than something "old" like Smalltalk-72? For that matter, did the commercial Smalltalk vendors insist likewise? Cheers, PhiHo
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jecel Assumpcao Jr" jecel@merlintec.com To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list" squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Sent: Tuesday, May 16, 2006 2:44 PM Subject: YASoB (was Re: some news)
PhiHo,
"Alan Kay" wrote:
"... it really bothers me that so many people on this list are satisfied with Smalltalk-80 (Yikes!) But that's another soapbox."
Dear Seasoned Squeakers,
I have followed this list for a while and I have a feeling that Alan Kay is not particularly fond of Smalltalk-80.
I've been wondering why or maybe I got it wrong.
Your thought is very much appreciated.
I really hope if Alan is not too busy we will be able to hear it straight from the Dragon's mouth. ;-)
Rather than speaking for Alan, I will just quote two paragraphs from his "Early History of Smalltalk" (there is a link to a PDF version in Stef's Free Books page and there is a html version with some missing pictures at http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/EarlyHistoryST.html):
I will try to show where most of the influences came from and how they were transformed in the magnetic field formed by the new personal computing metaphor. It was the attitudes as well as the great ideas of the pioneers that helped Smalltalk get invented. Many of the people I admired most at this time--such as Ivan Sutherland, Marvin Minsky, Seymour Papert, Gordon Moore, Bob Barton, Dave Evans, Butler Lampson, Jerome Bruner, and others--seemed to have a splendid sense that their creations, though wonderful by relative standards, were not near to the absolute thresholds that had to be crossed. Small minds try to form religions, the great ones just want better routes up the mountain. Where Newton said he saw further by standing on the shoulders of giants, computer scientists all too often stand on each other's toes. Myopia is still a problem where there are giants' shoulders to stand on--"outsight" is better than insight--but it can be minimized by using glasses whose lenses are highly sensitive to esthetics and criticism.
and
New ideas go through stages of acceptance, both from within and without.
From within, the sequence moves from "barely seeing" a pattern several
times, then noting it but not perceiving its "cosmic" significance, then using it operationally in several areas, then comes a "grand rotation" in which the pattern becomes the center of a new way of thinking, and finally, it turns into the same kind of inflexible religion that it originally broke away from. From without, as Schopenhauer noted, the new idea is first denounced as the work of the insane, in a few years it is considered obvious and mundane, and finally the original denouncers will claim to have invented it.
My comment on this is that Smalltalk-80 was indeed wonderful by relative standards, but it shouldn't become a religion that keeps us from inventing something better. Though this isn't nearly as sad as people who keep insisting on creating things that are worse while the public assumes it is automatically better than something "old" like Smalltalk (what C. S. Lewis called "chronological snobbery").
--Jecel