Newsgroups: comp.lang.dylan
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!newshost.marcam.com!uunet!in1.uu.net!world!edwards
From: edwards@world.std.com (Jonathan Edwards)
Subject: Re: Dylan Competitive Analysis: Dylan vs. SmalltalkAgents?
Message-ID: <D4rn66.95t@world.std.com>
Organization: IntraNet, Inc.
References: <FSIEBENL.95Feb28120258@atgserve.ny.jpmorgan.com>
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 1995 14:34:54 GMT
Lines: 30

In article <FSIEBENL.95Feb28120258@atgserve.ny.jpmorgan.com>,
Frank Siebenlist <fsiebenl@atgserve.ny.jpmorgan.com> wrote:
>
>I would be interested to see a comparison between Dylan and SmalltalkAgents,
>as many features and design goals of both languages+environments seem very alike.

I agree that STA seems similar to Dylan in many regards. Usually such close
similarity is cause for intense rivalry!

QKS in fact says they might run Dylan on their VM some day.
They seem to object to the concept of tethered development, at least to the
extent that the development environment is no longer written in the language
and available as a substrate for extension.

The more interesting issues relate to the application frameworks. I saw a
brief but impressive demo of the new STA interface builder. Reminded me of
what I saw on the Dylan tapes. The whole UI can be dynamically designed.
I think Apple's Woodstock will use generic function dispatch on event
singletons to "wire up" the UI. QKS has invented a "semantic messageing"
framework instead that dispatches events through a more dynamic topology.
Thus dragging a component to a different context can dynamically rewire it.

The interesting thing is that QKS claims their UI framework will be both
portable and native. Dylan needs this too! I wonder how hard it would be to
port. Could Dylan's macro system do Smalltalk?

-- 
Jonathan Edwards				edwards@intranet.com
IntraNet, Inc					617-527-7020
One Gateway Center				FAX: 617-527-6779
