Dear Friends,
This past week I got my January issue of Dr. Dobbs (yes, one of the few hard core mags still around that doesn't have it's head up some language's behind), and, as usual, I sat down to read Michael Swaine's column, and what do you know... he talks about Squeak! About 1/2 the column!
The article seemed to have a fair idea about Squeak, although he seemed to have no idea about the current state of Smalltalk. I was a bit surprised to get the impression that he didn't really know Smalltalk too much, but I guess no one can know everything.
As to the current state of Smalltalk, he talks about how Squeak will be hard to make any inroads against C++ or Java. As if Squeak was somehow synonymous with Smalltalk... I'd go as far as to say the tone of the article was that Smalltalk has somehow become Squeak.
I find that very unfortunate. As we all know, Squeak is to Smalltalk what Linux is to Unix, and no more has all of Unix become Linux than all of Smalltalk become Squeak. Which is not to say I have a problem with either Squeak or Linux. It's just that, oh, I don't know, It's just that I find it unfortunate that Squeak has, in this one case, as narrow as it may be, somehow occluded the demonstrable advances and successes of Smalltalk over the decades.
And So It Goes Sames
============================================================================ Samuel S. Shuster Continuum Methods & Frameworks, Inc. Go Smalltalk!