Re: It's the same in Real Life (TM).

Post #106,797 by deSitter 6/21/03 12:50:20 PM Reply	Re: It's the same in Real Life (TM). - wow If you do the mathematics properly in each case, you'll end up with the same answer. But the latter are much more general than the former and can more easily be extended to more complicated shed and sheet shapes (E.g. a chicken-shaped shed covered by Escher blocks). That's what SmallTalk and the like try to do. I've never been able to say exactly why I love these weird languages so much, but I think you identified the main issue - they appeal to the mathematical instinct. For example, APL and FORTH both are a basic set of operators (in FORTH they are called "words") that can be combined to make more operators. A program is thus a collection of operators. In the end, the system is the same after development as it was before, only it has more operators (in FORTH, more words). So, solving a problem amounts to supplying the missing operators. Did Smalltalk have a single creator, like FORTH and APL? -drl
Post #106,859 by a6l6e6x 6/22/03 12:24:22 AM Reply	Re: Did Smalltalk have a single creator, like FORTH and APL? It was a [link\|http://www.smalltalk.org/\|team effort at Xerox PARC]. Quoting a Dr. Dobb's article: "The recipients of this year's award, Adele Goldberg and Dan Ingalls, are pioneers in the area of object-oriented programming in general, and the Smalltalk language and development environment in particular. As researchers at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), Goldberg and Ingalls each recognized in their own way the promise of objects, and they were in a unique position to put those theories into practice in an architecture based on objects at every level." Alex "Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life." -- Eric Hoffer
Post #106,884 by tuberculosis 6/22/03 1:38:15 PM Reply	Early history of Smalltalk [link\|http://www.metaobject.com/papers/SmallHistory.pdf\|http://www.metaobjec.../SmallHistory.pdf] "One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs." -- Robert Firth
Post #106,986 by tseliot 6/23/03 12:57:48 PM Reply	Thanks for that. Very informative! Many fears are born of stupidity and ignorance - Which you should be feeding with rumour and generalisation. BOfH, 2002 "Episode" 10
Post #106,987 by deSitter 6/23/03 12:58:48 PM Reply	Re: Thanks for that. Very informative! Was waiting to read the whole thing before waxing ecstatic - yes it is grand. -drl

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