Re:Design Principles Behind Smalltalk (1981)
by mpweiher on Friday February 10, 2017 @10:53PM
(#13620902)
> competitive with Cocoa, Qt, JavaFX.
Where did Cocoa come from? It came from NeXT, which was Steve's second attempt at implementing the ideas he got from his PARC visit where he saw Smalltalk, the first obviously being Lisa/Mac.
And of course Cocoa is implemented in Objective-C, which is Smalltalk added to C.
And I would claim that Cocoa is hands down superior to Qt or JavaFX (does anyone actually use JavaFX?), and for precisely the reasons that are made possible by the dynamic nature of Objective-C. Having experienced 4GLs and other UI building systems, Cocoa managed and still manages to achieve the holy grail of combining 4GL-/screen-painter-like productivity with complete flexibility to implement anything you want, on a smooth curve.
We take that achievement for granted nowadays, but it is no mean feat.
But yes, Pharo/Squeak etc. are somewhat fossilized, but still amazingly productive compared to most anything else, and that's why there are communities of people committed to these fossils, being amazingly productive on them and trumpeting it.
Where did Cocoa come from? It came from NeXT, which was Steve's second attempt at implementing the ideas he got from his PARC visit where he saw Smalltalk, the first obviously being Lisa/Mac.
And of course Cocoa is implemented in Objective-C, which is Smalltalk added to C.
And I would claim that Cocoa is hands down superior to Qt or JavaFX (does anyone actually use JavaFX?), and for precisely the reasons that are made possible by the dynamic nature of Objective-C. Having experienced 4GLs and other UI building systems, Cocoa managed and still manages to achieve the holy grail of combining 4GL-/screen-painter-like productivity with complete flexibility to implement anything you want, on a smooth curve.
We take that achievement for granted nowadays, but it is no mean feat.
But yes, Pharo/Squeak etc. are somewhat fossilized, but still amazingly productive compared to most anything else, and that's why there are communities of people committed to these fossils, being amazingly productive on them and trumpeting it.