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From: morse@quark.mpr.ca (Daryl Morse)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: Interface Builders?
Message-ID: <MORSE.90Dec18115242@quark.mpr.ca>
Date: 18 Dec 90 11:52:42 GMT
References: <1212@autodesk.COM> <objtch.660869792@extro> <1386@autodesk.COM>
	<502@scubed.SCUBED.COM>
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In-Reply-To: warner@scubed.com's message of 17 Dec 90 17:07:51 GMT

In article <502@scubed.SCUBED.COM> warner@scubed.com (Ken Warner) writes:

[lots of stuff deleted]

<For a programmer, the leap to Smalltalk from conventional procedure
<oriented languages is too great.  Most companies can't afford the time
<to retrain. C++ will be mainstream because it's a short hop from C.
<What I see happening is that Objectworks for C++ could be the model
<for other C++ development environments.

Having recently made the leap from "conventional procedure oriented"
languages to Smalltalk, I will confess that it was non-trivial.
Furthermore, I agree that training costs *are* not insignificant.
However, to suggest that a leap to C++ would have been any less costly
is very misleading. If you intend only to write "C" code in C++, as
appears often to be the case, there is little or no overhead. However,
if you intend to write REAL Object-Oriented C++ code (ie. making use
of such features as multiple inheritance, etc), things change very
rapidly. C++ is not the simple, polished language that ST80 is. Many
of its features are either not available, or they do not work
consistently in all implementations (ie. CFront, G++, etc.), or they
are unstable. In comparision to the library that comes with ST80, C++
libraries are almost all a joke. Furthermore, in the effort to provide
C capabilities within C++, which IMHO, did nothing to encourage C++ to
be the clean, easy to understand language that ST80 is, C++ ended up
with a syntax that IMHO, is kludgy, complex, and very difficult to
learn. In short, what I am saying is that because ST80 is a pure OOL,
as opposed to C++, and is relatively stable, as opposed to C++, and
has a useful class library, as opposed to C++, it is a much better
vehicle for learning OO than C++.

[lots of stuff deleted]

<BTW: What do people think about Objectworks 4.0?  I've looked at it
<on the Mac and am ambivalent toward it.  The new interface looks like
<it was designed by a graphic artist instead of a programmer (is this
<good?).  I like the idea of separate windows but separate windows only
<clutter up the screen even more.

Having been a user of 4.0 for some months, I am not ambivalent toward
it. 4.0 is a much improved product over its predecessor. I do not
understand the comment about it being designed by a graphic artist.
The browsers and other user interfaces are all very usable, albeit,
with a few little quirks. Having separate windows is very useful if
you normally do other things while you are running ST80. If you want
to run more than one copy of ST80 at the same time, which we do often,
having separate windows is a necessity.
--
Daryl Morse                     | Voice : (604) 293-5476
MPR Teltech Ltd. 		| Fax   : (604) 293-5787
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