Newsgroups: comp.lang.dylan
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From: hinds@CAMIS.Stanford.EDU (Alexander Hinds)
Subject: Re: Making Dylan Competitive
Message-ID: <hinds.794517786@CAMIS.Stanford.EDU>
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Date: Mon, 6 Mar 1995 19:23:06 GMT
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ddyer@netcom.com (Dave Dyer) writes:

>development language.  Everybody who develops applications fantasizes about
>running the same code on many platforms.  Core algorithms, expressed in C,
>are pretty portable (A big improvement from the bad-old days when everything
>was written in assembler!) but the big problem, the big money sink, is 
>maintaining cross platform GUIs.

>Dylan provides the technology to solve the cross-platform problem, if the various
>dylan development efforts focus on it.  I hope they do, but the costs of doing
>so are up-front, while the benefits are downstream.

>There should be a well supported

>	Dylan Database
>	Dylan File System Interface
>	Dylan Windowing Environment

It's interesting that you mention this, and although a comparison with i
SmalltalkAgents is happening in another thread, I should interject that
STA provides precisely that:  crossplatform Windowing Env (very
flexible and extensible), crossplatform file system interface,
and soon (or so they say) crossplatform dbase solutions.

I'm very interested in Dylan, but I think mainly for the kinds
of tasks that I currently code in C++ (which I basically don't
like at all).  What I find really attractive about STA is that
apps will be truly portable with little or no mods,
including the interface.  This is so overwhelmingly important
to me, that I'm willing to overlook a few language niceties
such as multiple inheritance, etc.  

I guess it's unlikely at this point that I could totally
turned away from STA.  I realize that integrating the
windowing system, etc. into the dev. environment
can have some negative consequences, but for most of
the kinds of things I do it's a major benefit, not
a penalty.

For those of you looking for more info on STA, point your
web browsers to: http://www.qks.com

Disclaimer:  just a happy customer.

--X

