From: Daryl Richter <daryl@...>
Date: 2005-07-22T21:04:11+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby/Rails as a starter language?

Kev Jackson wrote:
> 
>>
>> Man, this makes me feel old.
>>
>> Giving Java credit for vm design, no pointers, safe code, unit testing 
>> (SUnuit!), etc. is laughable.
>>
>> Smalltalk (and others too...) provided all of this LONG before Java 
>> was even a twinkling in the eye of Sun's marketing & sales departments.
>>
>> [rest snipped]
>>
>>>
> Smalltalk had p-code and vms, but Javas VM is a very aggressively 
> optimized design.  

Ah, but the Java VM stunk until they acquired a Smalltalk startup who 
then developed the "hotspot" VM.  You can read about it here:

http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/projects/strongtalk/pages/history.html

The current VisualWorks Smalltalk VM is faster and more efficient than 
Sun's.

> I was suggesting that the Java team did a good job of 
> pulling together different pieces and making them fairly mainstream.  To 
> be honest you might as well say Lisp had everything before anyone else - 
> muhahahahahaha! Lisp rocks!  

"(and others too...)"

> But I wasn't saying that Java was first, 

Well, at least one person thought you were. ;)

> rather that Java represented (for a time being) a stage of language 
> evolution that was fairly cutting edge, 

This is not true.  There is nothing about Java that was or is cutting 
edge.  In many aspects such as the inclusion of primitive types, it was 
a big step backwards.

> without users having to adopt a 
> radically different programming model (SML, Lisp, Prolog etc).  

But this is the heart of the problem.  If I just keep writing my same 
old top-down procedural code, what have I gained by a new syntax?  The 
beauty of ruby (and Smalltalk) *is* its radically different programming 
model.

> So yeah, 
> I know Smalltalk was first (for many things), but Smalltalk (much as it 
> was loved by many in IBM and other big shops) didn't have the hype and 
> marketing.
> 

Agreed.  That's why I snidely referenced Sun's marketing dept., not 
their coders.

> Like it or not, it was Sun's marketing that drove VMs, safe code etc 
> into the mainstream.  Do you think without Java Microsoft would have 
> produced .Net?  The next stage of C evolution?
> 

Yes, I do.  Perhaps not so quickly, but it was inevitable.  Objects are 
the most productive coding paradigm.

> Again, to re-iterate, I'm not suggesting that Java was first at 
> anything, rather that it was first to push these ideas out of the niches 
> and into mainstream programming.
> 

Accidently, to be sure, but certainly true.

> Kev
> 

-- 
Daryl