Besides the obvious things, like how easy it is to find developers, one’s current level of fluency, or how good the ecosystem of tools is around a language, I’d point to these properties as being important.
1) Is it strongly typed? Do components connect together in such a way that one can have confidence the composition is correct just by virtue of compiling them? Or do you have to run the code to find this out? Smalltalk does not have this property. Anyone that has had a long workflow fail because of a typo that would have been caught in a well-typed program can appreciate this one. Other people are deluded or have an agenda. ☺ 2) Does it have type inference? Given an expression, can its type – say symbols bound to the expression -- be constrained just from analysis? Or does the code have to run? Smalltalk relies on dynamic typing (violating #1) and can’t do this. 3) Is it purely functional? Can variables be mutated? Do functions act like mathematical functions? Smalltalk is not purely functional. 4) Does it have closures? Can contextual (e.g. read/only) objects be treated than index variables without changing the parameterization of functions? `Blocks’ in Smalltalk. 5) Is it declarative? Does the language simply try to reflect what a microprocessor does (C), or does it add other semantics like search (not as a library, but natively). Does it insist the programmer must describe how to do everything rather than focus on what to do? Does the language have a concept like satisfaction of a goal? Smalltalk, not really. 6) Is it homoiconic? Can code construct code? (Without using text production and re-parsing.) Smalltalk is not. Overall, Smalltalk is an old language and computer science has progressed since then. Marcus From: Friam <[email protected]> on behalf of Merle Lefkoff <[email protected]> Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]> Date: Wednesday, May 23, 2018 at 5:27 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]> Subject: [FRIAM] Fwd: Fwd: Back to the Future with Smalltalk – Hacker Noon ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Adam Lefkoff <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Date: Wed, May 23, 2018 at 2:18 AM Subject: Re: Fwd: [FRIAM] Back to the Future with Smalltalk – Hacker Noon To: Merle Lefkoff <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Smalltalk is no better or worse than any other programming language. Anyone saying otherwise has an underlying agenda... On 5/22/2018 2:01 AM, Merle Lefkoff wrote: Shalom Adam. Is this interesting? ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Alfredo Covaleda Vélez <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Date: Tue, May 22, 2018 at 5:53 AM Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Back to the Future with Smalltalk – Hacker Noon To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Gracias Esto quizá podría resultarles interesante. Squeak is an open-source Smalltalk programming system. http://squeak.org/ Regards On Mon, May 21, 2018 at 12:52 PM, Gary Schiltz <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: I read that I while back. I like Smalltalk too, but I'm not holding my breath. On Mon, May 21, 2018 at 12:42 PM, Owen Densmore <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: This will make Dave West happy: https://hackernoon.com/back-to-the-future-with-smalltalk-57c68fab583a -- Owen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -- Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D. President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy emergentdiplomacy.org<http://emergentdiplomacy.org> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> mobile: (303) 859-5609 skype: merle.lelfkoff2 twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff -- Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D. President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy emergentdiplomacy.org<http://emergentdiplomacy.org> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> mobile: (303) 859-5609 skype: merle.lelfkoff2 twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
