Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!rutgers!usc!celia!peter
From: peter@celia.UUCP (Peter Farson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: Smalltalk for Scientific Applications
Message-ID: <537@celia.UUCP>
Date: 15 Aug 89 10:15:36 GMT
References: 
Reply-To: celia!peter@tis.llnl.gov (Peter Farson)
Organization: Rhythm & Hues, Inc., Hollywood
Lines: 40

In article  peskin@caip.rutgers.edu (R. L. Peskin) writes:
>
>
>
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>What about Smalltalk for the scientists?
>
 ...........
>
>How many of you out there in "Smalltalk net-land" are interested in these
>problems associated with scientific use of Smalltalk? Let's hear from
>

  The issue of efficiency is certainly one that I think is one of the
biggest potential obstacles to the more widespread use of Smalltalk.
While the sort of work I do (computer animation) is not really science
or engineering, many of the same concerns come up in my line of work.

I find that the usual C language environment is very inflexible.  It is
usually difficult or impossible to have a compiled module load in an
independently compiled module at runtime.  The standard C library does
not include the C compiler as one of it's functions.  The UNIX environment
is poorly integrated when compared to the Smalltalk environment.  A lot
of this is not necessarily a characteristic feature of the C language, but
just a holdover from earlier days, when more computing was done batch-style.

I believe that the qualities that make C very efficient can be retained while
implementing it in a way that is more conducive to interactive development.
What I would like to see is Smalltalk that had a good optimizing C compiler
function, so that the software developer could compile a C primitive just as
conveniently as a Smalltalk method.  I somehow don't expect that this will
be available very soon.



-- 
Can a bee be said to be                Peter Farson
An entire bee if                       celia!peter@tis.llnl.gov
Half the bee is not a bee              ...{ihnp4,ames}!lll-tis!celia!peter
Due to some ancient injury?