Weird Syntax and Language Adoption
In Sam Ruby's comments (it's old, but I only just noticed):
“If programming languages are Reinventing Smalltalk, why don’t we just use Smalltalk?”
Keith said:
Because Smalltalk’s got a weirdass syntax.
well, that attitude cost me *years* of what would have been productive Smalltalk time. I got over it.
Merry Christmas, and download Cincom Smalltalk Non-Commercial for a treat!
Comments
It's not just syntax
[Rob Meyer] December 29, 2005 10:36:00.804
It's not -just- the syntax, that's just part of it. The entire environment (integrated IDE, image files, etc.) is different than what people are used to. Just about every other mainstream language/environment has text files, that get compiled, and can be stored in version control and diffed. That's what people are deeply, deeply used to. Yes, you can do that in Smalltalk of course, but I haven't seen any good initial tutorials that come at it from that angle. I'd be happy to hear that I've just missed one. If it were just syntax, I don't think Mac developers wouldn't have picked up Objective-C so readily. People can handle one or two fundamentally different ideas at a time, but picking up Smalltalk sort of seems to demand that they throw away a lot of what they hold dear (whether that's for the best is largely irrelevant). That makes for a higher barrier to entry.
Without the Environment...
[James Robertson] December 29, 2005 11:35:19.475
Without the environment, it's not really Smalltalk. I realize that's the objection, but there it is...