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From: jordan@cruzio.com (Jordan Bortz)
Subject: Re: Goodbye ParcPlace
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References: <5b6mc5$s6b@chronicle.concentric.net> <32e040ba.89373231@news.jumppoint.com> <E3yptv.M8@cruzio.com> <32dbea01.46454b49@feki.toppoint.de>
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Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 06:04:12 GMT
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Well, my comments had nothing to do with Java PER SE, although there
was some java implication.

The major thrust of my message was that other environments can, and
will, continue to feed off of the major Smalltalk features -- I mean,
although Visual Basick is far from Smalltalk, it DOES have a very
Smalltalk like Source Code debugger. That kind of thing.

Personally, I find products like PowerBuilder to be the major
competition to Smalltalk, especially in the "here and now" RDB app
development world -- Java is an environment for coding Web
applications... So don't read to much in as far as Java... I think
Java is disappointing for now, but will get much devlopment attention.

Also some other people were commenting that the "future of Smalltalk"
is having it generate bytecodes for Java.  I find this idea silly for
several reasons:

	1) It will only hasten a transition from Smalltalk to Java
	2) The argument that Smalltalk generating bytecodes for Java will give
life to Smalltalk is like the argument that a compiler that generates
bytecodes for Java from Fortran will give a new lease on life to
Fortran
	3) The argument that Java programmers will give up programming in Java
so they can program in Smalltalk and thereby generate Java bytecodes
is like saying that if there were perfect German to English
transalting machines, all the Americans would give up English so they
could speak in German and have it come out in English
	4) The argument that the Smalltalk syntax is superior is, for the most
part an untrue assertion for the vast hordes of application
programmers out there... (in my opinion)
To them, having a clean if..then..else syntax is probably more
important than having a nice iteration syntax. To those programmers,
If/else is more common than someCollection do:.  Also to the millions
of programmers familiar with the foo.Bar(baz) notation, they are just
used to it and not bothered by it like we Smalltalkers are.  In any
case, any Java (or other language) enviornment could reparse and
redirect the syntax to reflect the programmers taste, Smalltalk or not
Smalltalk.

In anycase, my business is in the Smalltalk arena, not the Java arena,
and I of course, am hoping for the best for Smalltalk, and not the
other way around..
	Jordan


marten@feki.toppoint.de (Marten Feldtmann) wrote:

>In article <E3yptv.M8@cruzio.com>, Jordan Bortz <jordan@cruzio.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Goodbye VisualWorks, Goodbye VisualSmalltalk, HELLO JIGSAW!
>>>Long live Smalltalk, it will never die, if you think it's being replaced
>>>you've been sucked into temporary marketing hoopla.  How the heck can
>>>Smalltalk get replaced by languages that don't even have BLOCKS! ??? !!!
>>
>>Easily -- when that language implements blocks!
>>When Java has blocks and native widgets (probably less than a year
>>from now) what will people be doing with Smalltalk?

> Java here, there and everywhere. What you will see is - over the long
>term - that Microsoft will deliver it's own Java implementation, non
>portable but optimized for Windows platforms and then one of the great
>ideas of Java will vanish. And perhaps in the future we will see a
>Visual-Basic for Internet - better than Java - at least on Windows
>platforms.

> Smalltalk was dead in the past (remember when C++ entered the market,
>when Eiffel entered the market ...), is dead in the present and will
>never live in the future - but it's still alive :-). It's still a
>remarkable software system and in some aspects still ahead of other
>software systems.

> But in contrast to Java, C++ I have to admit, that the start of
>software development with Smalltalk is expensive and therefore has never
>entered the large software market.


> Marten



