Hmm. I'd also think scalability is important if you're doing a large
DA/DP project. I don't know anything about the scalability of squeak,
except I remember once trying to bring in large JPGs on windows and it
was crashing like crazy. (I was away from my ISP at the time, and
forgot about this till now.) Is this a bug? are there memory
limitations in squeak? Did I do something wrong?

-John

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Ingalls [mailto:Dan.Ingalls at disney.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 1999 1:35 PM
To: Pedro Gomes
Cc: squeak at cs.uiuc.edu
Subject: Re: Squeak stability in large aquisition and data
processingproject...


>I'm involved in the development of a aquisition and data computation
>system in a research institute and was originally decided to use C++
to
>develop such complex system.
>
>I've been doing some experiments (fun!!) with Squeak for some time
now
>and am considering the opportuinity to use version 2.5 for my
project.
>
>My question is : Is Squeak fast and stable enougth to use in the
>development of such system..

Pedro -

Regarding speed, you have the beast in your hands.  I suggest you
determine the critical areas of your application and then benchmark
that particular function in Squeak.

People use "stability" to mean "free of bugs (won't crash out from
under me)" and "free of capricious change (won't suddenly break my app
when I get the next set of updates)".  Regarding the first issue, I am
probably not the right person to ask, but we use and abuse Squeak
daily and I consider it to be as bug-free as any commercial software.
Regarding the second, Squeak is intentionally not very stable in this
regard.  Anyone who wants to maintain a major system in Squeak would
be advised to adopt and maintain a fixed version on their own, thus
avoiding the problem of "shifting sands".

Hope this helps.

	- Dan