"Andreas Raab" <andreas.raab at gmx.de> wrote:

> Tim -
> 
> > Is Smalltalk slower than C for array processing of big lists of
> > homogeneous data? Yup. Is it too slow to do fascinating things? Take a
> > look at Croquet and decide.
> 
> It always annoys me when people do this, e.g., confuse the language with the 
> system. That Croquet has been written using the Smalltalk language means 
> nothing whatsoever. It might as well have been written in JavaScript, 
> Python, Ruby  (or Logo for god's sake ;-) for all which we now have Parsers. 
> None of which would make much of a difference.
Now, you just _know_ that I'm gonna disagree with you about this but it
isn't worth an argument. Clearly, Croquet (or any other software) could
be written in any language (blah blah turing complete blah blah)
 - even assembler with enough time and drugs. Actually, I wrote an
entire VM in assembler and it probably counts as the drug all by
itself...

My intended point was simply that Croquet _is_ written in a Smalltalk
(and obviously it could be written in VW if one wanted ) and it _is_
fast enough to be seriously impressive. I hoped that this would
successfully imply that interesting systems are rarely characterised
purely by the performance of the implementation system. Evidently I was
too vague and fluffy this time!

tim
--
Tim Rowledge, tim at sumeru.stanford.edu, http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim
Useful random insult:- He's so dense, the Titanic wouldn't sink in his head.