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From: johnson@uiucdcsp.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: Smalltalk/V Decompiler
Message-ID: <80500021@uiucdcsp>
Date: Thu, 29-Oct-87 07:34:00 EST
Article-I.D.: uiucdcsp.80500021
Posted: Thu Oct 29 07:34:00 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 31-Oct-87 20:41:28 EST
References: <2490@mmintl.UUCP>
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Nf-From: uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu!johnson    Oct 29 06:34:00 1987


One of the things that I like best about Smalltalk-80 is the
ability to examine every part of the system.  It reminds me
a lot of Unix "in the good old days".  If the source code
were unreadable then Smalltalk would not be very useful to
me.  More importantly, I would never have become a Smalltalk
expert, because most of what I learned initially was from
reading the code.

However, what Digitalk is doing is pretty reasonable.  They
don't hide very much of their system, mostly just the compiler.
Although I have enjoyed hacking the Smalltalk-80 compiler very
much, I suppose that this is probably not a good thing to do in
general.  The main reason for having unreadable code is that there
are people who want to write applications and protect their
investment.  These people are not selling their code to Smalltalk
programmers, but to people who just want to use their system.
("You mean people actually USE Smalltalk?")  I always try to get
source, but lots of other people don't feel that way.  There are
many developers who will consider this feature of Digitalk to be
an asset, not a liability.

(For those who might have been confused by my message, Digitalk
produces Smalltalk-V, not Smalltalk-80.)