Re: [Help-smalltalk] Community sprint

[Bram Neijt]

On 9/29/06, Paolo Bonzini <address@hidden> wrote:
> Unfortunately I must agree that there is.  But I'm afraid that it is
> what people want.  Smalltalk has been sending messages to create classes
> for 25 years, but people still prefer language that don't.  I'm afraid
> we need syntactic sugar for them.

I'm don't want to start any flaming here, but I'm totally thinking in
the oposite direction. I don't think people want a different syntax.
When I got interested into Smalltalk, I was _only_ repelled by the
following:
- I could not find any simple example on the internet, appart from hello world.
- There are little or no usable programs out there, and I couldn't
find any done with GNU Smalltalk.
- Everybody seemed to be stuck to their image, saying: look what I can
do, this is great.
- There are allot of different smalltalks out there, and every one has
a different syntax, so you have to choose a platform before even
learning anything.


The only thing that will make me hate or love smalltalk is the ability
to solve my problems. My problems currently are:
- Having to build an installer if you have multiple files. I would
like to see .jar like packages so I can have a single "executable" and
keep my files in it. Preferrable, having it's own protable filesystem
if needed. ( I would love GNU Smalltalk to become a kind of virtual
mini computer you can run, ideally using hardware virtuallization in
the future.)
- Have a portable system: being able to give my program to users of
other platforms, without having to test on them.
- Having a standard library that can already do handy things:
splitting up strings, regular expressions, scanning data,
multi-platform file system abstraction, etc.
- Security possiblilities: Being able to isolate parts of your code
for security reasons. This will allow you to download plugins and
untrusted code and still use it in your program. (I like the Ruby
safe-mode system)

My 2 cents,
 Bram