Steve Dekorte steve@dekorte.com wrote
In my experience, most developers find Smalltalk style code very difficult to read.
I think it depends on where they're coming from. I can imagine an experienced C or C++ programmer looking at Smalltalk code and finding it completely incomprehensible, just as an experienced Perl programmer would find Python a mystery.
But I'd maintain that if we use the nearest we can find to an objective viewpoint (that of a complete neophyte) then they would find the cleaner coding of Smalltalk or Python (and the more directly OO nature of either) a big advantage. And, then again, Smalltalk is so wonderfully reflective, which is a notion that seems to confuse a lot of people coming from C or Java. Historically it seems to have been particulary successful with kids.
John
----- Original Message ----- From: "John Hinsley" jhinsley@telinco.co.uk To: self-interest@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2001 3:01 PM Subject: [self-interest] Re: Re: An OO history
Steve Dekorte steve@dekorte.com wrote
In my experience, most developers find Smalltalk style code very difficult to read.
I think it depends on where they're coming from. I can imagine an experienced C or C++ programmer looking at Smalltalk code and finding it completely incomprehensible, just as an experienced Perl programmer would find Python a mystery.
It's not my feeling. Smalltalk is very readable and highly orthogonal language, in spide of his dynamic aspect. One thing who would completely clutter someone from another background is the environment, which is highly interactive and window-based, with *no* edit-compile-run cycle. An important fact about Smalltalk is the code document itself. This fact is not so true with other programming languages.
Ian
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