Design Principles Behind Smalltalk, Revisited

J J azreal1977 at hotmail.com
Wed Jan 3 20:53:10 UTC 2007


The reason I chose Java to use as a reference was because by every chart I 
have seen it is by far the most used language and therefor an example of 
"success" (well and it fits my arguments better :).  And what I mean by 
"success" is, regardless of what you or I think of the language, the number 
of people using it have validated some of the ideas that were questioned in 
the original email.


>From: Marcel Weiher <marcel at metaobject.com>
>Reply-To: The general-purpose Squeak developers 
>list<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
>To: The general-purpose Squeak developers 
>list<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
>Subject: Re: Design Principles Behind Smalltalk, Revisited
>Date: Tue, 2 Jan 2007 22:26:31 -0800
>
>
>On Dec 26, 2006, at 3:18 , J J wrote:
>
>>
>>>Again, to contrast with Python, Squeak wants to run the show, but  Python 
>>>plays nice with all the other free tools of the GNU/Linux  ecosystem.
>>
>>I keep on seeing this, but it appears largely overstated.  Java has  it's 
>>own VM, threads etc. as well.
>
>Yes, Java.  I think Python is very different from Java in this  context, as 
>Java also wants to run the show, and I think this is where  it is quite 
>similar to Smalltalk.  Python on the other hand is quite  happy to play 
>along with others, just like Ruby, Perl and, of course, C.
>
>[more java comparison]
>
>>
>>And if you mean more to address the tools, well yes you *can* edit  Java 
>>code in vi if you really want to.  But no one really wants to.   And if 
>>your interface to the language is through some program  anyway, then the 
>>"barrier" of the code not being on the file system  disappears.
>
>Once again, I think that Java is not a valid substitute for Python in  this 
>context.  In my experience, hacking Python in or Java or Ruby in  vi is not 
>just doable but quite useful.  I can't say the same for Java.
>
>Marcel
>
>

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