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From: rfenney@directnet.com (Robert J. Fenney)
Subject: Re: Smalltalk Challenge
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References: <485ljn$nac$1@mhadf.production.compuserve.com> <487lfm$ts9@watnews2.watson.ibm.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Nov 1995 08:13:28 GMT
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In article <487lfm$ts9@watnews2.watson.ibm.com>, David N. Smith
<dnsmith@watson.ibm.com> wrote:

> In article <485ljn$nac$1@mhadf.production.compuserve.com> Joe Hughes,
> 74671.617@CompuServe.COM writes:
> >In the October Communications of the ACM Magazine there is an 
> >article where the writer mentions that he used Smalltalk to 
> >program 512K Textronix oscilloscopes.  Let me repeat that, 512K, 
> >not 512MB, oscilloscopes back in 1991.
> >WHAT HAPPENED TO THIS KNOWLEDGE!!!
> >WHY can't we do this with the current Smalltalk's?
> >Therefore I issue the following challenge with a practical point.
> >I challenge one of the Smalltalk vendors to develop an 
> >installation program in Smalltalk.  In other words, the entire 
> >image has to fix on a 1.4MB floppy.  It is sad that Smalltalkers 
> >must resort to VisualBasic or C when they want to do a 
> >installation program.  I wish I could offer some reward, but the 
> >reward is that restoration of this ability will boom the 
> >Smalltalk market.
> >
> 
> Digitalk's first Smalltalk system came (uncompressed) on two 800K
> floppies, as I recall. My first application in Smalltalk was a
> visual language with draggable parts, wires to connect them etc.,
> and it was done under DOS in 640K, including the full development
> environment. And it ran fairly fast on a 286!
> 
> I haven't looked at their DOS version in a long time but I suspect
> it isn't that much bigger.
> 
> Vendors are selling what users want and users want glops of
> function so that large, rich, Windows/Warp/Mac aware, fancy GUI,
> applications can be built quickly. You don't do that in 512K.
> 
> Dave
> 
> __________________________________
> David N. Smith
> dnsmith@watson.ibm.com
> 70167.2274@compuserve.com
> IBM T J Watson Research Center
> Hawthorne, NY
> __________________________________
> Any opinions or recommendations
> herein are those of the author  
> and not of his employer.

BTW, as I remember, the 286 version is what HP used in their scopes.


Robert
