From: Markus <markus@...>
Date: 2004-09-28T15:02:41+09:00
Subject: Re: Smalltalk comparison

On Mon, 2004-09-27 at 21:37, Matt Lawrence wrote:
> Smalltalk is a complete environment where the system can see all of itself 
> all the time.  While it was never done, I find the idea of being able to 
> spend trillions of spare CPU cycles doing optimization quite appealing. 

     I've loved smalltalk from my first encounter with it back in 1980. 
But very early in that encounter I learned just how dangerous a system
that "can see all of itself all the time" can be.  I had a few clever
ideas that I wanted to try, and in the process of trying them I got to
learn all about rolling back & salvaging objects from corrupted system
images.  
     Not to say that it wasn't fun...

> it's not really applicable to Ruby as long 
> as Ruby is just a language and not the entire environment.  

     That's probably the main reason I use ruby over smalltalk: ruby is
more--not quite sure what word I want here--secular?  adaptive? humble
maybe?  Smalltalk is wonderful as smalltalk, but ruby is easier to wedge
in to the interstitial spaces of a real system.

-- MarkusQ