Thanks John,
That's cool. I was hoping someone would mention that a lot 
of research went into the Smalltalk languge / syntax but 
in the case of Java it was devised by a C++ programmer 
trying to make a more understandable / readable 
C++.(That's what my C++ college tutor said about Java [He 
also said it was because JG couldn't understand multiple 
inheritance. But I thought he went a bit too far there]).I 
think Squeak is superior on all fronts including the 
language. So the decision seems well justified 
technologically.

Gary


13/01/02 07:41:10, John.Maloney at disney.com wrote:

>At 10:05 PM +0000 1/12/02, Gary McGovern wrote:
>>Thank you very much John, that's good information. But 
I'm quite sure Squeak 
>>Central could have manipulated Java to have those 
features (licenses 
>>permitting).
>
>Well, I suppose we could have built our own Java VM, then 
added
>the dynamic programming features, although I'm not sure 
we could have
>called the resulting system "Java". But I think that all 
of us felt that
>if we were going to build a VM ourselves, we might as 
well build a
>Smalltalk VM. Remember, when we started Squeak we really 
didn't
>plan to create an open source language; that happened a 
year later.
>Orginally we simply wanted a vehicle for our research 
into kids
>programming environments.
>
>
>>It's not just the kids that like dynamic programming ;-
),I like it and I'm 
>>sure NASA would find it useful. As I originally said, I 
prefer the Squeak 
>>technology. I was thinking people.
>
>You're right, there are a lot of Java and C/C++ 
programmers out there.
>But we've got a lot of terrific Squeak programmers right 
here! More
>people isn't necessary better; quality people are 
probably more important.
>Furthermore, we've had good success in using open-source 
C libraries
>from Squeak: the MPEG and JPEG libraries are two good 
examples.
>So we actually do leverage some of the open source work 
done in C/C++.
>
>For professional programming, Squeak has two 
disadvantages. First,
>you can't compile a small, stand-along executable. Of 
course, the same is
>true of Java. Second, Squeak makes management very 
nervous. Most managers
>are happiest doing the "safe" thing, the thing that 
everyone else does, which
>is C++ or Java. Fortunately, in education and research 
settings, these issues
>are usually not a problem.
>
>	-- John
>
>
>
>
>