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From: johnson@p.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: Objectworks for Smalltalk-80
Message-ID: <80500089@p.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 28 Feb 90 01:39:48 GMT
References: <5888@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Lines: 31
Nf-ID: #R:blake.acs.washington.edu:5888:p.cs.uiuc.edu:80500089:000:1709
Nf-From: p.cs.uiuc.edu!johnson    Feb 26 22:49:00 1990


I will argue with Greg Woods a little.

ParcPlace is the owner of the Smalltalk-80 trademark.  The latest version
of Smalltalk-80, 2.5, runs on Macs, 386 based machines, Sun 3s and Sun 4s,
and some HP machines.  It is very portable, and would run on more machines
if ParcPlace wanted it to sell it on more machines.  2.5 has all sorts of
nice features, such as exception handling and a good binary object storage
system.

Smalltalk V, by Digitalk, is also nice.  Smalltalk V is a smaller system,
and runs well on smaller machines.  Smalltalk-80 does not run well on
smaller machines.  On the other hand, Smalltalk V has a smaller class
library, so Smalltalk-80 is putting the space it consumes to a good use.
Smalltalk V on a Mac looks like a Mac application, while Smalltalk V
on OS/2 looks like a Presentation Manager application.  As you might
expect, the Mac and OS/2 versions of Smalltalk V are not completely
compatible.  On the other hand, you can use the exact same image for
Smalltalk-80 on the Mac, the Sun 3, and the Sun 4.  Of course, the
resulting programs don't look like anything else on the Mac or the Suns.
Originally Smalltalk-80 was around a thousand dollars and Smalltalk V
was under a hundred dollars, so there are probably more Smalltalk V
users than Smalltalk-80 users.  ParcPlace has lowered their prices
and Digitalk raised theirs, so the prices are not so different now.

Both systems are nice.  I am more familiar with Smalltalk-80, so it is
not surprising, and probably not significant, that I prefer it.  I
talk with lots of companies that use Smalltalk-V, so you will be in
good company no matter which path you take.

Ralph Johnson - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign