Complementary language?

[Martin Drautzburg]

HackingYodel <taoiststarter at -nospam-yahoo.com> writes:

> Does any single language do a better job in
> Python's weaker areas? Would anyone care to suggest one to supplement
> Python.  

My first real OO language was Smalltalk. But the existing Smalltalk
implementations all have some severe shortcomings. Either they are
incomplete (Squeak), have no active community (Smalltalk/X) or they
are real expensive and bulky (VisualWorks, VisualAge). But
conceptually all these Smalltalk systems give me the feeling "thats
what OO should be like".

Python OTOH was the best compromise I could find, beeing reasonably
OO, fairly complete and free - and I am very happy with it.

I am one order of magnitude more productive in Python than in Java but
a little less productive than in Smalltalk. To wet your appetite let
me telly you, that in Python you have much shorter turnaround times
than in Java, because you don't have to compile your code after you
fixed a bug. In Smalltalk you don't even have to restart your
application, i.e. developping and running an application melts
together. It's like "doing brain surgery to yourself" as someone said.

So if you are interested to look at something even more radically OO
than Python you might want to give Squeak (http://www.squeak.org) a
try. Alan Kay, the guy wo coined the term "Object oriented" is one if
its fathers.