Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Reserved keyword conflicts

JavaFX - the latest hype on the language market. But not without trouble.

"insert" and "delete" are new JavaFX keywords - so they conflict
when you will try to call a Java method
with this name. But there is help - this time use double angle brackets. So yet another thing to remember ...

Thats why Smalltalk is so much better - it is simple and consistent without all these "language workarounds". Your brain is free to care about solving the problem - and not busy remember all language possibilities or busy satisfying the compiler.

And I tell you a secret: Smalltalk is not a language - its a dynamic object system with the language built in...

5 comments:

Clarco said...

Looks suspiciously like an april fools joke...

Vladimir said...

Yeah. Sounds great for Smalltalk again. I unhappy sometimes with Java. :-) But Java is interhuman platform which guarantee that your project can be supported by other people.

Smalltalk is great — but a rare thing.

Torsten, just interesting... do you have an idea how to put people (which doesn't know St) to work on Smalltalk project?

I mean than in business word you can give away your Java project to other, with Smalltalk it will be so hard :-)

Torsten said...

Claus: it's not a joke, just open NetBeans 6.5 and try yourself ;)

Vladimir: Yes - Smalltalk (as most technologies these days) is a rare thing compared to Java.

But as you know: if people have two options not always the better one wins - most of the time it is the more common option. So people need no excuse for a more "esoteric" technology in the case that the project fails :)

That does not mean that Smalltalk is always the best solution, anything I will tell you is to first have a look at the problem and then carefully decide.

About your question: its not hard to give a project to other or collaborate/work in a team - have a look at squeaksource.com

You can even give it to others in a "running" state or while the debugger is open and the other party is able to continue easily ;)

If your questions means: how to get more people into Smalltalk - I would answer with another question: why would you? People will typically only find there way to Smalltalk if they search for something more satisfying. But most of them are happy with things they get served by the industry...

Vladimir said...

Torsten, Yeah, I spent much time with Smalltalk, used VW and Squeak and SqueakSource.

Usually people don't want to pay attention at the dark sides of Smalltalk :-)

Seaside was a great step — it actually made possible to create applications with good web-interface (instead of ugly looking VW UI or Squeak UI).

I would better use Smalltalk in projects, or something that will replace it :-) And looking for a good time when it returns.

Torsten said...

Yes - an application done in VW is always easy to recognize due to its UI look ;)

I think you should read this about Javas Swing and its Smalltalk history:

http://www.zefhemel.com/archives/2003/12/29/java-swing-history

Yes: Swing was done by people who wrote the VW UI.

I agree - Squeak (the default image) is looking bad too. But you should have a look at
pharo-project.org

It's a Squeak fork (same VM, different image) - much better
tested, more modular and better UI. Sooner or later Morphic will be replaced here...

It's still beta - but promising
(Closures fixed, new UI, Unicode) and completely free with clean MIT license

Or have a look at http://www.opencroquet.org for a more revolutionary Squeak UI in 3D ;)