Apple hyping java...

Todd Blanchard todd.blanchard at cacheon.com
Mon Apr 1 21:05:17 UTC 2002


From: John Hinsley [mailto:johnhinsley at blueyonder.co.uk]

>Oddly, I think the main issue with Squeak is a mind set thing 

Maybe, but I was a VisualWorks developer for a few years so Smalltalk
isn't exactly new to me.  My earlier statement about Squeak not being a
production environment stands.  

The UI is weird and IMHO, difficult to work with.  It lacks a well
written set of out of the box UI widgets like those found in most
platform toolkits.  Many are there - but they are not easy to use.
Getting decent expansion behavior seems harder than it ought to be. I
spent a few weeks playing, trying to customize the look of Scamper's
button bar and found little changes caused all sorts of weird layout
issues.  To Java's credit, the layout managers in Swing are relatively
easy to use by comparison.

>I think this is the main problem: you're approaching Squeak as an
expert (and,
>to be sure, someone far more experienced than me). Maybe you could try
>approaching it like a child. 

I've tried that too.  Squeak is a major sensory overload on first
encounter.  Squeak reminds me a bit of my first skydive, exhilarating, a
trifle frightening, great fun, but a bit more than I can cope with all
at once on my own. Too much is revealed initially.  Its an astonishingly
intimidating environment, largely due to its initial volume I think. 

Todd Blanchard



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