Smalltalk and Python

[Aaron Jon Reichow]

On 13 Dec 2000, Erno Kuusela wrote:

> the thing that struck me as a little foreign was the apparent
> isolation of the smalltalk image from the rest of the operating system
> and the filesystem. i want to be able to grep code!

While I'm not a proponent of Smalltalk isolationism, grep is a useless
tool (more or less), simply an artifact, ye, a symptom of the
sickness known as file-based development.

> but i guess this is just an artifact of that particular
> implementation. (it was the only free one that i came across however)

A lot of Smalltalks have better integration with the host OS, but Squeak
is also the most portable, and runs on the most platforms.  

> | - Mediocre IDE. I hope this will be improved over time, along with the 
> | GUI support.
> 
> emacs!

Emacs (even Xemacs, with OO-browser) is a poor IDE.  It's little more than
an editor.  Sure, you have fancy syntax-highlighting, a news/email/web
client, but not the dynamic, incredibly integrated environment that are
common to all Smalltalks, less GNU Smalltalk and Little Smalltalk.

> | It's an absolutely stunning language for free, and although not as fast 
> | as Perl
> 
> (it's as fast in my experience)

According to some benchmarks I've seen, Squeak is faster. ;P  (although it
doesn't feel like it sometimes, with Morphic)

Aaron

Aaron Reichow                   :: "In essence, Smalltalk is a programming
Twin Ports ACM Vice President   ::  language focused on human beings rather
http://www.d.umn.edu/~reic0024/ ::  than the computer." - Alan Knight