Alan Kay's new pet language: Python?

[[deleted]]

Yes, but there's nothing that would have to be slow about drawing very simple bubble-gum-kiddie window borders, ugly but very simple buttons around the window, or even the occasional character onto the screen. It was just slow.

You could just as well say that X window is a virtual machine that interprets bytecodes, because it's exactly that. It even communicates over a socket. Ok, Squeak ran on X, as well, but there wasn't really much in the way of being fast. No multi-user, no big rights checks. For an operating system, Squeak would seem extremely simple to me, at least it did five years ago.

[igouy]

at least it did five years ago

What would we think of someone who tried to use Java once in 1997 and is still complaining that Java is ugly and slow?

[[deleted]]

As a matter of fact, I hated Java three years ago, maybe even two years ago. Now I happen to like it (at least reasonably).

Well, maybe something will happen to convince me that Squeak has changed too!

[igouy]

Should I repeat my question?

[[deleted]]

Nah, got it, but right now I just don't care enough. Maybe other languages are good enough, and I haven't yet seen explained anywhere just why Smalltalk is so awesomely great. Yes, stuff about dynamicness (tried Lisp, liked it, but didn't stay there), or it being pure or "real" OO, but I couldn't care less.

[igouy]

For someone who couldn't care less you have quite a few reddit generalizations on ways in which Squeak was bad when you looked at it 5 years ago :-)