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Re: A question



rwk@americom.com wrote:
> 
...
> . I understand, Harliquin's Dylan provides incremantal compilation (in a
>   running application) though I have not used it.  I would like to know
>   how well it works.  Is Smalltalk interpreted?

Incremental compilation works great in FunDev.  Just hit Ctrl-Shift-C
on the method/class/variable/etc in the editor and your running program
reflects the change immediately.

One of the things I haven't seen mentioned in this thread is the 
excellent Functional Developer IDE.  It definately requires a beefy
machine with at least 128MB memory, but it's a well thought out 
environment, and a pleasure to use.

DUIM is a very nice UI toolkit also.

> . Dylan's container classes are second to none with a rich extensible
>   hierarchy.
> 
> . Excellent exception handling (though I know nothing of Smalltalk's)
> 
> . Class and Subclass slots as well as virtual slots.
> 
> . Flexible typing system allowing easy prototyping up front, and
>   performance tuning later.

And FunDev supports the performance tuning with dispatch optimization
coloring and the new profiling interface.

> > "Stephen J. Guthrie" wrote:
> > >
> > > I purchased the Dylan Professional from Harlequin about a year ago and
> > > stopped using it entirely after the recent events with FO.  I'm considering
> > > picking the language back up but I would like an objective evaluation as to
> > > why I should.
> > >
> > > I recently began programming in Squeak (Smalltalk).  Give me a reason to
> > > come back to Dylan.

I don't know much about Smalltalk, but I've been programming in Java
for the last few years and when using Dylan it's such a relief not to
be forced to design my program in a certain way because of single 
inheritance, single dispatch, and a generally class-centric world-view.
Icky icky icky pah-too.  And you can quote me on that.



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