Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
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From: Hasko Heinecke <hasko@heeg.de>
Subject: Re: Advantages of Smalltalk over Java
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Organization: Georg Heeg - Object-Oriented Systems
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Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 16:03:22 GMT
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bowen.richard.rw@bhp.com.au wrote:
> I was looking to learn Smalltalk, but I'm thinking of learning
> Java instead.
> 
> Apart from developing environments and class libraries, what are
> the differences between Smalltalk and Java?  I don't know either
> very well, but from here they both seem very similar.  Given the
> immediate widespread acceptance of Java, will it kill Smalltalk?

Java and Smalltalk serve completely different purposes, although they
both use the object-oriented paradigm as a basis.

Java provides certain features that Smalltalk doesn't and vice versa.
E.g. security in the sense of viruses, trojan horses etc. played a major
role in the design of Java.

On the other hand, you wouldn't want your sensitive data to leave your
server at all. For this kind of secure application you need a powerful
and scalable client/server architecture.

The bottom line is that Smalltalk and Java are both needed and useful in
their respective domains. Besides, Java is not yet as mature as
Smalltalk, so for _learning_ OO concepts you should always take the
latter.

Hasko
-- 
+------------------------------------------------------+
| Hasko Heinecke, Georg Heeg - Object-Oriented Systems |
| hasko@heeg.de or try http://www.heeg.de/             |
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