I believe that Dan Ingalls (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Ingalls)  
once defined an operating system as "whatever your programming  
language doesn't provide" with the implication that a good programming  
language (such as Smalltalk) would not need much of an operating  
system. Keep in mind that Smalltalk came out of the the 1970s, about  
the same era as UNIX.  The assumption that there would be a common,  
powerful operating system was not really the same then as it is now.

James Foster


On Jul 3, 2008, at 5:23 PM, itgiawa wrote:

>
> I'm not sure where the best place to ask this is so if you can  
> redirect me
> that would be great.
>
> Lets say instead of an operating system and applications all we ran  
> was
> smalltalk. What are some of the benefits that we would have and
> disadvantages?
>
> Pros:
> * There would be a common interface between EVERYTHING. So now if I  
> wanted
> to make changes to a GUI I could do that. The only way to do this in  
> OS X or
> windows is with messy hacks.
> * Less dependency on standards like XML or HTTP. Instead of everyone  
> having
> to learn standards you just build an object and talk to that.
>
> Cons:
> * There would still be some sense of "platform dependency." Even  
> though
> there is no "operating system" we still have a collection of objects  
> that
> preform the tasks of an OS like memory management and cpu scheduling.
>
> * Scaling. Would this be as hard to scale as a giant c/java program?
>
> What else can you guys think of?
>
> -- 
> View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Smalltalk-philosophy-tp18270563p18270563.html
> Sent from the Squeak - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
>