Xref: utzoo comp.lang.smalltalk:667 comp.lang.c++:1572
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk,comp.lang.c++
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: OO debuggers
Message-ID: <1988Sep14.002226.7089@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <3930@tekgvs.GVS.TEK.COM>
Date: Wed, 14 Sep 88 00:22:26 GMT

In article <3930@tekgvs.GVS.TEK.COM> jans@tekgvs.GVS.TEK.COM (Jan Steinman) writes:
>C++ ... seems to be evolving strictly in the 
>incestuous C-Unix environment.  It currently provides nowhere near the 
>productivity nor capability (except in execution speed, the least important 
>metric in the present "software crisis") of even a moderate Smalltalk 
>implementation...

Au contraire, execution speed is a major metric in the software crisis,
although somewhat indirectly:  it is important because lack of it leads to
otherwise-promising software tools being rejected as impractical.  Whether
this is rational or not -- and personally I think there is much to be said
for it -- it is the way things are.  Smalltalk's performance problems, more
than anything else, have given it its reputation of being a nice toy for
researchers and nothing more.  I don't think anybody would claim that C++
is as nice as Smalltalk, but it moves a useful distance in the right
direction, and it does a much better job of meeting performance constraints
that are considered non-negotiable in many applications.

Let us not forget how C became a major programming language, while many
prettier languages were forgotten, by being more practical.  C++ is "the
next C" in more ways than one.
-- 
NASA is into artificial        |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
stupidity.  - Jerry Pournelle  | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu