Why Smalltalk did not do better

[Ian Joyner]

Here is an interesting article by Rebecca Wirfs-Brock commenting on another article by Gilad Bracha on why Smalltalk did not succeed better.

https://wirfs-brock.com/allen/posts/914

Of course there are reasons like performance and lack of type checking. One thing struck me was that Smalltalk had tried to compete with C++, when the competition was other high-level platforms.

"While those of us working on Smalltalk VMs loved to chase C++ performance our actual competition was PowerBuilder, Visual Basic, and occasionally Delphi.”

Now we can consider why Eiffel is not doing better. Is it because people say Eiffel is a competitor of C++? I certainly have. But I have been examining Stroustrup’s writings from 1986 on and it he makes it clear he was not trying to be OO (he certainly succeeded) but just extend C. I’ll post more on that later.

C is just the lowest-common-denominator language. C and C++ should be reserved for systems programming on certain platforms. The industry does not seem to understand the huge difference between system and general programming. C and C++ really should be limited to the small system market and for low-level platform dependency. Eiffel is more platform agnostic.

Does anyone else have thoughts on parallels between Smalltalk’s demise and Eiffel’s still small market share?

Ian

[Ulrich Windl]

Hi Ian,

instead of asking whether Eiffel is "better" than C++ (which you don't seem wanted to be asked), we should define the "dimensions" of "better", like:
Reliability of final code
Reliability of typical development environment
Speed to develop new code
Efficiency of final code
Resource consumption of final code
Platform availability
Application areas covered
etc.

Ulrich

07.07.2024 09:02:15 Ian Joyner <joyne...@gmail.com>:

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[Ian Joyner]

Hello Ulrich,

I agree that we need criteria to technically judge the difference. But the success or failure in languages does not come down to that. I think there are other lessons in the Smalltalk article. I suggested one.

Ian

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