On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 6:17 PM, David T. Lewis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Look at the Number class hierarchy (browse hierarchy) and look at the > "instance creation" category on the class side of each of these classes. > That will give you some good tips. If you are dealing with simple data > structures on a single machine architecture, this will not be too > difficult.
I'll give it a look. > The binary image of C data structures is inherently non-portable. The > compiler may pad data to different positions, the byte ordering may > vary on different hardware, and even simple data types can have different > sizes and byte orderings from one operating system to another. If you > are dealing with floating point data types, it's even trickier. > Yep, I know. And Smalltalk has reputation for not playing well with others so there may be some friction here. > I don't know what instrument you are dealing with, but if there is > a way to get it to produce data in a more platform-independent manner, > that may save you some aggrivation in the long run. > I work with off-the-shelf sonar systems and lots of ancillary equipment such as sound velocimeters, RTK GPS, etc. I develop new post-processing procedures, filters, visualization etc. and usually code them up as Unix CLI programs in C. I don't have much control over the design of the systems or the file formats they use. I've noticed with multi-core machines that the real bottleneck now is I/O not CPU time. So I thought, why not try a higher-level language than C and boost my productivity? I am a scientist not a proffesional programmer, but I've been coding all my life and coding is part of my job. That's why I am looking into Smalltalk. Can't get much higher level than this. Besides, I've always wanted to learn Smalltalk and/or Lisp. _______________________________________________ Beginners mailing list Beginners@lists.squeakfoundation.org http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners
