Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!bb3.andrew.cmu.edu!nntp.sei.cmu.edu!news.psc.edu!hudson.lm.com!newsfeed.pitt.edu!dsinc!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!in1.uu.net!news1.digital.com!nntp-hub2.barrnet.net!pacbell.com!amdahl.com!amd!netcomsv!uucp3.netcom.com!netcomsv!uu3news.netcom.com!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!nagle
From: nagle@netcom.com (John Nagle)
Subject: Re: Sun's HotJava - ParPlace's Visualworks??
Message-ID: <nagleDDBpFt.FKx@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <khaw.807485983@parcplace.com> <40o4ot$4tb@news1.delphi.com>
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 1995 23:04:41 GMT
Lines: 30
Sender: nagle@netcom4.netcom.com

jsutherland@BIX.com (Jeff Sutherland) writes:
>khaw wrote:
>>>>As an accident of history, most programmers will find Java much easier to
>>>>learn than ST. For better or for worse, that s the way it is. Perhaps it
>>>>makes more sense to spend the time and money to train for ST, and it will
>>>>all be recovered in spades. Even so, many will prefer to pick up Java and
>>>>run.

     Well, we have more experience with both Smalltalk and C++ now.
Java seems to be a reasonable synthesis of both. 

>The most profound analysis was made by Maury (spelling?) Gellman, a genius
>physicist type, who pointed out that life was teleological in a sense not
>well understood by the group.  One of several examples, was the fact that
>events occur by accident like the formation of right DNA patterns in
>proteins rather than left, which effectively close off the left alternative
>for all time in biological evolution.

     It's Murray Gell-Mann, one of the world's top physicists.
Actually, that's a standard observation about the history of technology.
Quite a number of technologies have been closed off for somewhat
accidental reasons.  Unless you're into the history of technology,
you probably don't know they ever existed.  A few examples related to
the computer field are amorphous semiconductors, magnetic printing,
window-management MMUs, dataflow machines, and variable-word-length
machines.  All of these made it to market, all worked, and all are dead,
not because they didn't work, but because they were so different from
the mainstream technologies with which they competed.

				John Nagle
