Richard --

Regarding 4a, I think a much better way to do this is with a multiple 
perspective architecture as in Goldstein and Bobrow's PIE system 
(done in Smalltalk at PARC).

Cheers,

Alan

------

At 2:45 PM +1300 2/13/02, Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:
>	"My boss gave me a set
>	of criteria which needs to be filled:
>(1) intuitive and easy to use IDE;
>(2) simplified GUI design and event handling;
>(3) advanced error handling;
>(4) advanced object oriented design including
>(4a) multiple inheritance,
>(4b) abstract classes,
>(4c) and garbage collection;
>(5) full support for operator and function overloading;
>(6) and portable (at compile-time) across various platforms.
>	I have already looked at C++, Java, C++, C#, Eiffel, and even VB.net;
>	I may be missing something but as far as I can tell all of these
>	languages are missing something from this list."
>
>Squeak is of course missing (4a) and arguably (5).
>It's not clear whether (3) means exceptions or the kind of error logging
>and handling stuff required in telecoms software.
>As for (1), that always seems to mean "I don't want to learn anything new."
>
>To be perfectly honest, the only thing Eiffel is missing here is (5),
>but most Eiffel programmers don't miss it.  (Mind you, what Betrand Meyer
>thinks of under (3) is very different from C++ exceptions...)
>
>Arguably O'CAML meets these requirements.
>
>It seems to me as though this is a Pointy-Haired Boss who has culled a
>shopping list from magazines.  Anyone who thinks garbage collection is
>"advanced" is Not With It; Simula 67 had garbage collection.  I even wonder
>if the real aim here was not "Ah HAH, so you can't find anything that meets
>these requirements, so we SHALL use C++ after all...."


--