The reason I chose Java to use as a reference was because by every chart I have seen it is by far the most used language and therefor an example of "success" (well and it fits my arguments better :). And what I mean by "success" is, regardless of what you or I think of the language, the number of people using it have validated some of the ideas that were questioned in the original email.
From: Marcel Weiher marcel@metaobject.com Reply-To: The general-purpose Squeak developers listsqueak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org To: The general-purpose Squeak developers listsqueak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Subject: Re: Design Principles Behind Smalltalk, Revisited Date: Tue, 2 Jan 2007 22:26:31 -0800
On Dec 26, 2006, at 3:18 , J J wrote:
Again, to contrast with Python, Squeak wants to run the show, but Python plays nice with all the other free tools of the GNU/Linux ecosystem.
I keep on seeing this, but it appears largely overstated. Java has it's own VM, threads etc. as well.
Yes, Java. I think Python is very different from Java in this context, as Java also wants to run the show, and I think this is where it is quite similar to Smalltalk. Python on the other hand is quite happy to play along with others, just like Ruby, Perl and, of course, C.
[more java comparison]
And if you mean more to address the tools, well yes you *can* edit Java code in vi if you really want to. But no one really wants to. And if your interface to the language is through some program anyway, then the "barrier" of the code not being on the file system disappears.
Once again, I think that Java is not a valid substitute for Python in this context. In my experience, hacking Python in or Java or Ruby in vi is not just doable but quite useful. I can't say the same for Java.
Marcel
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