A couple of minor points below. However the major question is... Given that 
there is all this effort, and that we should taken advantage of it, how 
would you suggest to do so?

At 10:38 PM 1/15/2002 -0800, Eric Arseneau wrote:
>I love Smalltalk and still wish to build applications using it, but I think
>we need to find ways to work with the huge amount of effort the Java
>community is putting into what they are doing.  I happen to be stuck earning
>a living with Java and try to combine my Smalltalk experience with Java as
>much as I can.  This has created some really cool results with the people I
>work with when I can explain to them what the real power of objects all the
>time really works !!!  Things like Talks2 are really cool ideas and allow us
>to have the power of what we all know works without having to reinvent the
>wheels others can provide :-)
>
>Three points that have been brought up on this discussion that I wanted to
>correct:
>
>1- Can't do replace code on the fly while debugging in Java
>This is no longer the case, sun has added a HotSwap that allows a class to
>be replaced on the fly while a debugger is running.  This is used by a new
>IDE called Eclipse with the JDT installed.
>See
>     http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/docs/guide/jpda/enhancements.html
>look for HotSwap

OK, but note that there are still some considerable differences in what you 
can do with Smalltalk/Squeak. For example, there is the common idiom in 
Smalltalk of writing code that refers to a method that hasn't been written 
yet, running the code, and once you get the error, defining the method in 
the debugger. This is completely impossible in Java because (a) the code 
won't compile (b) Java exceptions unwind immediately, so an unhandled 
exception puts you *out* of the debugger, not *into* it.

<snip>

>3- Squeak can do more
>I disagree very strongly, there are so many more tools and support for many
>different things that people need in order to build applications that they
>cannot be listed.  Agreed a lot of them are complete crap, but many of them
>are incredible.  Take Standard Window Toolkit upon which Eclipse is built
>on.  SWT is a window toolkit that replaces the Ackward Window Toolkit (AWT)
>and Swing with a GUI layer that uses as many host widgets as possible.  It
>manages to look and feel like a real host application, without the awefull
>feel of AWT and the ugliness of SWING !!!  A good number of the
>standards/API that are being defined by the Java community are really
>useful.  You can't overlook what the momentum behind Java just because its
>not an exact fit.

As I understand it, calling it the Standard Window Toolkit is an 
interesting choice of names, since it isn't at all the standard Java 
toolkit. I believe it's more or less a re-implementation of the 
VisualAge/Smalltalk Common Widgets, which does exactly the same thing in 
Smalltalk, and has for many years.


--
Alan Knight [|], Cincom Smalltalk Development
knight at acm.org
aknight at cincom.com
http://www.cincom.com/smalltalk