From: Curt Hibbs <curt@...>
Date: 2005-02-12T04:42:59+09:00
Subject: Re: A Ruby-relevant quote from Alan Kay

Adriano Ferreira wrote:
>
> On Fri, 11 Feb 2005 22:38:00 +0900, Douglas Livingstone
> <rampant@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Thanks Tom, that's the meaning I was after :)
> > (Any feedback as to why I didn't make sense appreciated!)
>
> Sorry, Douglas, for misinterpreting what you have said. It just didn't
> catch my mind your analogy between Smalltalk in the past and Java
> today. I think the relation between Smalltalk to Ruby in the past is
> not similar to the one Java has to Ruby in present days.
>
> Smalltalk seems to me that it never caught up really, because the
> developer base kept relatively small and many people find the
> Smalltalk way hard (maybe because it is radical and many like the
> well-known).  It is a cult language, just like Lisp, I think. But
> Java, everybody programs Java, and that does not mean nothing about
> the code quality.

I think this is part of the reason, but I think there is another reason for
the failure of smalltalk that is just as important: The use of an "image"
instead of files. This kept smalltalk in a closed world that did not play
well the outside world.

Curt