Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk,comp.object,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.c
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!europa.chnt.gtegsc.com!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!cherokee!da_vinci!beavis!glwilli
From: glwilli@beavis561102 (Glenn Williams)
Subject: Re: SmallTalk vs C++ Challenge! 8/17/95 New York City
Message-ID: <DDGtpD.Ftp@da_vinci.ecte.uswc.uswest.com>
Sender: glwilli@beavis (Glenn Williams)
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Organization: U S WEST Technologies, Inc.
References: <dqua.808484992@dqua> <40tdgr$lpr@newsbf02.news.aol.com>
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 17:24:48 GMT
Lines: 29
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.lang.smalltalk:27313 comp.object:36978 comp.lang.c++:144475 comp.lang.c:151775

In article <40tdgr$lpr@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, bytesmiths@aol.com (Bytesmiths) writes:
> dqua@earthlink.net (Derick J.R. Qua-Gonzalez) writes:
>     "A 10- to 20-fold increase in 'productivity' if gained only through
> even a 5-fold increase in runtime, is unacceptable."
> 
> Unacceptable to whom? Perhaps to high energy physicists doing stand-alone,
> computationally intensive work (who are mostly enamoured of C++), but
> certainly not to typical MIS shops, where time to implement,
> maintenability, and flexibility are paramount, and where client-server
> latency swamps out even a 5x difference in run-time on the client machine.
> (This is an area where Smalltalk is kicking butt, with perhaps 2-3 times
> the new design-ins as C++.)
> 

We looked into Smalltalk ( a major project here was developed in Smalltalk, and redeveloped in C++ ) because of the gains in productivity. But in our environment, X-Terminals served from UNIX servers, it raises our hardware costs. Our UNIX servers normally handle 40+ users, using X-terminals. With Smalltalk its down to between 4 and 17. Smalltalk wants a single processor. It also wants a lot of memory. Its a resource hog. The cost of using Smalltalk here isn't just the runtime speed, its the hardware to su
pport it.

On a side...
A question I've asked the Smalltalk vendors and Smalltalk programmers is how
many stand-alone, shrink-wrapped, on-the-self software packages are being 
written in Smalltalk? How many commercial PC programs are out there written in
Smalltalk? So far the answer is very few. If anyone knows of one, let me know.

glenn

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Glenn Williams
US WEST
