Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!bbn!apple!mikel From: mikel@apple.com (mikel) Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk Subject: Re: Digitalk Smalltalk/V for Mac Message-ID: <737@internal.Apple.COM> Date: 21 Feb 89 19:55:05 GMT Sender: usenet@Apple.COM Organization: Apple Computer, Inc. Lines: 58 References:<89@ <67500006@uicbert.eecs.uic.edu> >> Just recently read the glowing review of ParkPlace's (sp?) $900 implementation >> of Smalltalk-80 for the Mac in Byte, has anyone had any experience with >> Digitalk's $195 version? What does the one have but the other doesn't? In article <67500006@uicbert.eecs.uic.edu> wilson@uicbert.eecs.uic.edu writes: > I asked similar questions a while back but got no responses. If anybody > out there has any experience with V/Mac, please post any impressions > you have of it. In scanning through the several messages posted after these posts, I didn't find any that actually answered the original question, so here's my two cents. I have used ParcPlace's SmallTalk a number of times, and I will concur that it is very slick. It has a lot of very convenient development tools and an extremely rich class hierarchy that makes it really easy to quickly construct more such tools. As an example, PP SmallTalk-80 can be used as the world's most expensive dumb terminal emulator for the Mac because the necessary classes for modem access are already built in. On the down side, PPS does not support the Mac interface at all, and they don't seem inclined to do so in the future as far as I can tell. This is not a problem if you are approaching the product as a SmallTalk aficianado, but definitely an annoyance if you are approaching it as a Mac developer. The screen update is also just slow enough on a Mac II to set the C and Modula2 hackers I know clucking a little under their breaths. By comparison, SmallTalk/V does support the Mac interface pretty well, although not perfectly. The text editor, for instance, invariably drives experienced Mac users crazy. It just doesn't work the way every other text editor for the Mac works. One plus relative to PPS-80 is that the screen display seems to be fast enough to satisfy the hardest-core C hackers I know ("that's SmallTalk? Wow."). Both products are really good. When you pay the extra money for PPS, what I think you are getting is, first of all, the original, one-and-only, name-brand SmallTalk; and second you get a richer class hierarchy and more nifty and useful little tools. You also get pretty transparent portability to machines like Suns and, I presume, the new 80386 version of PPS-80. If you buy SmallTalk/V you get off for less money, you get the Mac interface, and you get a very reasonable liscensing agreement if you want to distribute applications. What you do not get is all those extra tools, though Barbara Noparstak of Digitalk assured me that Digitalk is porting the Goodies packages from their PC version to the Mac. Jim Anderson of Digitalk also mentioned a few other nifty tools we might expect to see eventually, like native code generators (talk about speed!) and direct-manipulation interface constructors (a subject near to my heart). Oh yeah; with Digitalk you also get portability between the Mac and 286 machines. You also get some portability from 8086 PCs to the Mac, but it's pretty much one way because the little version of SmallTalk/V doesn't have a lot of the classes necessary to support typical code written on the Mac version. By the way, after using both, I bought SmallTalk/V. No reflection on ParcPlace, I just liked SmallTalk/V a little better; probably a combination of personal taste and price.