From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: fac41,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 114809,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gid114809,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-Thread: f43e6,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: OO, C++, and something much better! Date: 1997/01/26 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 212398118 references: <32DFD972.37E4@concentric.net> <5bphq4$5js@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU> <32E987FC.1FF2@rase.com> <32EB78FB.3EE6@jmpstart.com> <32EB9BCA.3013@rase.com> organization: New York University newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.smalltalk,comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.ada,comp.object,comp.software-eng Date: 1997-01-26T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Tansel said "I actually deliberately used this example. First of all, it has an element of truth that although you can develop applications very fast with Smalltalk, fine tuning and packaging them is slow, even with Today's nice tools, so I don't think that we should create an illusion that it is all a bed of roses. However, still there is no comparison. It is my observation that since it is so easy to develop in Smalltalk, the first target of people is to make the system run. That allows so many performance problems to creep into the system, which need to be optimized later." Robert replies As I said before, it is amusing to see a new generation of programmers exposed for the first time to the wonders of dynamic languages (if there had been an internet 30 years ago, you could surely have seen exactly the post above talking about Lisp). The idea that you can completely ignore efficiency and then somehow fix it up later by "optimization" is appealing, but naive. if you want efficient, you have think about this requirement from the start. To say that you can deal with this later is very similar to the claim that you can develop in a sloppy hack-away-and-get-it-working mode and then build in reliability later. In my opinion a lot of the problems in large software systems, no matter what language they are built in, arise from failure to do proper design and requirements engineering. You would think that we would have learned something about this in all this time, but I still see people building large systems in the same roar-ahead-and-get-it-working-more-or-less mode. Although it is of course possible to develop large and reliable systems in Smalltalk, one has to consider the people dynamics of any language, and in my experience, Smalltalk tends to unduly encourage premature coding. o