Comment Curious (Score 1) 27
Am I mistaken in thinking that #Smalltalk is not totally portable to platforms that are not microsoft variants because of the mention on the site that it produces dll's? I use Squeak now and have not been terribly interested in all the mutated # language variants being created to work with microsoft .NET. The mention of .dll and the statement that (paraphrased) "you can use the microsoft dbgclr debugger to debug" make it sound tied to the microsoft platform to me, while Squeak runs on all kinds of platforms and is full featured now. I realize #Smalltalk is a work in progress and therefore comparing current 'features' and class libraries are not only irrelevant but also illogical at this time since it is still being worked on, but I am wondering, could not classes be made for Squeak to at least let it communicate with remote .NET objects/services? If my question above about #Smalltalk being, in some sense, tied to a compatible microsoft underlayment, what would be the advantages compared to Squeak which runs on tons of things? If I am mistaken about #Smalltalk, then I respectfully withdraw the question. I'm just curious, since I've been using Squeak and XML and SOAP etc. to do, hmm, "similar" network/services things that .NET was designed for.
Just FYI, I'm a bit of an "oldster", having used punched cards, and languages many youngsters :) may not have even heard of, algol, snobol, PL/I, and as far as I am concerned, the "language wars" are over and were childish when they were going on. Do you see #Smalltalk and Squeak as alternatives, competitors, two sides of the same coin, satisfying different niches, essentially the same and up to personal choice, or what?
Also, I saw on the #Smalltalk website, on one of the pages, Compiler perhaps, an example of 1 to: 1000 do: [ ] and mention of how in smalltalk we would get 1000 smalltalk objects, which it was said, were not really needed and so the objects would be done away with and you would just use 32-bit integers instead. I presume this is done transparently and backward compatible such that, for example, if the index spilled over into large integers, ( > 32 bits) things would still behave the way the would in other smalltalks such as Squeak. That is, an internal optimization, but if I wanted the object, I would get an object, and not something else?
Thanks. It looks like you guys put in a lot of hard work on #Smalltalk and I will watch it with interest.
Just FYI, I'm a bit of an "oldster", having used punched cards, and languages many youngsters
Also, I saw on the #Smalltalk website, on one of the pages, Compiler perhaps, an example of 1 to: 1000 do: [ ] and mention of how in smalltalk we would get 1000 smalltalk objects, which it was said, were not really needed and so the objects would be done away with and you would just use 32-bit integers instead. I presume this is done transparently and backward compatible such that, for example, if the index spilled over into large integers, ( > 32 bits) things would still behave the way the would in other smalltalks such as Squeak. That is, an internal optimization, but if I wanted the object, I would get an object, and not something else?
Thanks. It looks like you guys put in a lot of hard work on #Smalltalk and I will watch it with interest.
