prototypes vs classes was: Re: Sun's HotSpot

David N. Smith dnsmith at watson.ibm.com
Sun Oct 11 20:17:10 UTC 1998


At 14:59 -0400 10/10/98, Dan Shafer wrote:

>To that end, has anyone else here looked at REBOL
>(http://www.rebol.com), a new Net-specific scripting language with
>objects including Net-native data types like URLs and email addresses?
>It's not ready for prime time IMNSHO, but it points in some potentially
>very interesting directions.
Dan:

I just went and looked at the REBOL site and was first struck by the
Java-hype-like first page:

   Simplicity
   Productivity
   Communications
   Independence
   Humanity              (huh?)

During Java's early days Sun had a similar yet even more outlandish list of
'attributes' of Java, many of which were purely marketing hype, some of
which have yet to really happen, and some were downright lies.

Java, REBOL, and others are just programming languages, not cures for
cancer or providers of world peace.

I wish some of the vendors would spare us the horse droppings.

Of course, if Smalltalkers had lied through their teeth in 1988 then maybe
Smalltalk *would* have taken over the world.  :-)

When I calm down I'll go take another look, though it did seem that even
the tutorial was hype too. (See, just write this magic line and, see,
*bam*, *wham*, *zowie*, it prints 'Hello World'! What Humanity! What
Simplicity. Lay down the burden of the past and just REBOL!)

I did download it, start it, and saw, *POW*  *FLASH*, a caret and a
blinking cursor.

Dave

I must be in a bad mood.  :-)
_______________________________
David N. Smith
IBM T J Watson Research Center
Hawthorne, NY
_______________________________
Any opinions or recommendations
herein are those of the author
and not of his employer.





More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list