This is one of Smalltalk's great failings IMO

Post #8,703 by tuberculosis 9/12/01 5:39:49 PM Reply	This is one of Smalltalk's great failings IMO Failure to standardize source code interchange formats.
Post #8,714 by Fearless Freep 9/12/01 6:27:31 PM Reply	Not really Source Code interchange bwtweeen Smalltalk versions makes little sense as the clas libraries don't match. Exporting code from Squeak to import into VisualAge isn't possible because the classes are so different; why bother with source code format Jay O'Connor "Going places unmapped to do things unplanned to people unsuspecting"
Post #8,740 by wharris2 9/12/01 9:07:48 PM Reply	Re: Not really Ah, so you can't Open Source smalltalk? That no man should scruple, or hesitate a moment to use arms in defense of so valuable a blessing [as freedom], on which all the good and evil of life depends, is clearly my opinion; yet arms ... should be the last resource. - George Washington
Post #8,775 by Fearless Freep 9/12/01 10:45:29 PM Reply	Wrong You can (and people have) Open Source Smalltalk, just that your code is targetted for a particular version of Smalltalk. You can open source your VisualWorks code and anyone can use it in VisualWorks applications, but it probably won't work in Dolphin without modification Squeak itself is Open Source, but I believe it's the only IDE/compiler in that status Jay O'Connor "Going places unmapped to do things unplanned to people unsuspecting"
Post #8,929 by tuberculosis 9/13/01 3:09:33 PM Reply	Thats one of the other ones the class libraries don't match. Its kept the community fragmented and unable to gain critical mass. I'm not saying all Smalltalks should be identical, but there ought to be base equivalencies at some level - for instance collections and stuff. Just like you have portable C and then platform specific C, there ought to be similar facilities in Smalltalk. It would allow some libraries to be developed once and shared among all Smalltalk users regardless of implementation.
Post #8,931 by Fearless Freep 9/13/01 3:23:57 PM Reply	Actually.. Most of the Collections and Streams are compatible and a lot of base stuff The real divergence is in anything dealing with the underlying OS; both GUI and File IO. Since each Smalltalk was written to fit a different sort of problem from a different philisophical direction, they have differen tways of implementing the relationship with their environment. Which is actually a good thing. Dolphin and Visualworks have different goals they try to attain, so they have different ways of meeting those goals. So the developer can choose the approach that makes more sense for their own particular problem Jay O'Connor "Going places unmapped to do things unplanned to people unsuspecting"
Post #9,333 by ben_tilly 9/15/01 11:02:08 PM Reply	Many incompatible but perfectly finely-tuned answers... will lose in the end to a worse answer that works in many situations. This is the basic message of Worse is Better. There are many features which are better per developer or per project, but are worse per community. Creating ideal environments at the cost of fragmentation has been a classic issue for languages like Lisp. By contrast languages like C and Perl, clearly much worse in many ways, do a better job with that and benefit on the whole from it. The fact that Smalltalk provides the custom answer you really want on your project is not at all inconsistent with the failure of Smalltalk to realize the potential that its supporters believe possible. Cheers, Ben

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