From: Julian Fitzell Date: 2002-04-30T02:57:30+09:00 Subject: Re: RubyConf.new(2002) - ideas for agenda Bil Kleb wrote: > Avi Bryant wrote: > >>"Why I Jumped Ship to Smalltalk, and How Ruby Can Learn From It". > > > You discussed this a bit on the IOWA list and a couple folks thought > we should bring the discussion over here. Are you up to providing > a brief summary? Basic summary: - Development tools - Ease of iterative development Avi started rewriting IOWA in Squeak as an excuse to learn Squeak and on the theory that the more times it is rewritten the cleaner it will be (he's also played with Java, a C base library, and Lisp - none of which I worked with directly). As expected the rewrite was cleaner and as it coincided with a job that we decided to use Seaside (the Squeak IOWA) for, it got a lot of exercise in that process too. I was initially reluctant to leave Ruby and wanted to make sure we ported everything back to the Ruby version but after using it for a period of time, it is less of a priority. I still think it's a good idea and I would probably help someone get going on it and maybe even get to it some day if I find enough time just sitting around with nothing to do. But the development environment of Squeak is so much more pleasant - I can change a method just by clicking on it and the web app is instantly using the new version... no need to find the right file, find the method, change it, save the file, reload the app... And I can press a button on a remote web server admin page and it will load in the new version. Anyway, I can still see a use for Ruby for smaller projects where the overhead of running squeak is not required and where the code can be in CVS, etc. And maybe when Ruby has an excellent IDE the rest of the issues will be resolved as well. We haven't given up, we're just not focusing on Ruby at the moment. If anyone wants to work on a port, Avi and I will certainly be happy to give pointers, answer quetsions, and maybe even some coding time :). The old IOWA source is on source forge and we can easily add anyone who wants to work on a new one to the CVS committers. That said, you should probably have a decent understanding of smalltalk or be willing to learn and you should grab a copy of Seaside (http://www.beta4.com/seaside/) and play with it and look at the code. Julian -- julian@beta4.com Beta4 Productions (http://www.beta4.com)