A different way of doing Smalltalk development (was: Tales of Dying Objects)

Eric Scharff Eric.Scharff at Colorado.EDU
Wed Jun 21 05:42:37 UTC 2000


I agree that while Squeak (and many real Smalltalks) are very large, that
this by itself isn't necessarily a problem, and with advancing hardware
becomes less of a problem.

What worries me is that with bloat come other negative things,
specifically difficulties in learning, difficulties in understanding what
exists, difficulties in knowing what is best to use, and slowness.  I
think these four (probably overlapping) issues are what we need to address
head on.  Some are solved with more "elegant" solutions (where more
elegant doesn't always mean smaller),  others we have to think hard
enough.

This may not be correct, but for me Squeak isn't just a "Smalltalk".  It's
a collaborative programming experience.  And with that we need to address
the problems that we, and every other, collaborative software-building
community need to face.

P.S.  I got my start programming on a Commodore 64, and I too loved every
minute of writing small and powerful programs.  It just isn't
*everything*. :)

-Eric





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