Hi all I found this email really interesting. Especially the concurrent aspects. Clearly some nice research projects in perspective. Also the immutability bit supports would be great.
Stef Begin forwarded message: > From: Antony Blakey <[email protected]> > Date: March 18, 2009 2:50:47 AM CEST > To: [email protected], VWNC NC <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [vwnc] Would you start a new Smalltalk project today? > > I am a commercial user of VW. > > I've recently replaced my VW/GLORP/Postgresql app with one built in > Ruby/CouchDB. I moved to Ruby because the documentation/learning > material is superior to VW, because of the number of third party > components, which is partly an issue of VW not being Open Source, > because of tools such as Rails, Sinatra and Merb (which I still prefer > over Seaside), and because I needed to focus on sustainable technology > transfer into a market that won't accept VW. Tangentially I wanted to > (subjectively) quantify the productivity improvement due to Smalltalk > relative to another dynamic language (as opposed to Java in Eclipse). > > My experience with Ruby is that the language itself is just too much > of a hack, and this was especially brought home to me when I started > doing Scala and Clojure, and that emphasized for me the beauty of > Smalltalk and Lisp/Scheme. > > I'm going back to Smalltak for new commercial development, partly > because of this, but also because a) the Squeak community is getting a > real injection of energy with Cog and Pharo (which itself pushes > Squeak) and b) I'm getting a good feeling about the way the Cincom > team is changing VW - not only what they're doing, but there seems to > be a much clearer vision and approach that when I first encountered > it. > > I'm also building a commercial application in Scala and Clojure. Both > are great languages, especially for highly concurrent apps, and the > library support is huge because they seamlessly use Java. If this were > the "good old days"(TM) I'm sure someone would be working on decent > concurrency support for Smalltalk. Using multiple images is one > approach, but not one that I like - it seems (IMHO) to be a reaction > to the lack of resources to do something better. Most of the Erlang/ > Scala/Clojure goodness could be layered into Smalltalk if someone had > the will to do so, but I think Cincom would have to do that for it to > get the wide support it would need to have a dependable future. > > One benefit that a JVM language has, as opposed to Smalltalk, is that > both the underlying performance improves, and the available libraries > increase and improve independently of the language. Clojure and Scala > don't need effort per se to improve. Oh for a Smalltalk running on the > JVM in a high performance manner, with JVM object model integration. I > think there is no other way to solve this problem for Smalltalk. > > I really miss programming in an image despite the pain of the Object/ > Subject problem. I don't think it's *always* more productive than > Scala or Clojure (esp for concurrency) but it's more *consistently* > productive. > > Smalltalk's decline has not been terminal, implementations are > improving albeit more slowly than one would like, and as long as it's > the right tool for the job then you should use it. > > On 18/03/2009, at 8:03 AM, David Finlayson wrote: > >> Clojure has some great ideas but you need to know Lisp and Emacs. > > Both Scala and Clojure have good and improving support in (to varying > degrees) IntelliJ, Eclipse, and NetBeans - no Emacs/Slime/VIM > required. I use Clojure and Scala in IntelliJ, and I've done so in > Eclipse as well. > >> 2. No Smalltalk I've used has a decent GUI. Squeak is an >> abomination, down the road Pharo may be good, but not today and VW >> looks like it hasn't been updated since the NT days. Although >> everyone hates Java cross-platform desktop apps, it is interesting >> to compare a VW app (say Bottom Feeder) to a Java app of similar >> design (http://www.rssowl.org/overview). In my opinion the Java >> version fits in a lot better than the VW version (particularly on >> the Mac). > > For VW, my LinkuisticsUI bundle in the public Store improves the > situation somewhat on OSX for VW 7.6. Cincom are also making > improvements to the OSX UI for 7.7. > > Closure and Scala have Swing integration. Scala has very good SWT > bindings. All three IDEs have GUI builders. > > Maybe you should consider a Web UI - checkout tools such as Capuccino > and efforts like bespin. > > Antony Blakey > ------------- > CTO, Linkuistics Pty Ltd > Ph: 0438 840 787 > > A reasonable man adapts himself to suit his environment. An > unreasonable man persists in attempting to adapt his environment to > suit himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. > -- George Bernard Shaw > > > _______________________________________________ > vwnc mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc > _______________________________________________ Pharo-project mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project
