[OT] If programming languages were religions...

Randall Reetz randall at randallreetz.com
Sun Dec 21 12:32:09 EST 2008


A little respect to bill atkinson at apple (hypercard's inventor) and allan kay before him (the xerox parc inventor of smalltalk). Please. 

-----Original Message-----
From: "Randall Reetz" <randall at randallreetz.com>
To: "How to use Revolution" <use-revolution at lists.runrev.com>
Sent: 12/21/2008 9:19 AM
Subject: RE: [OT] If programming languages were religions...

There are three aspects that determine the fit of a development system.  The first is final execution environment.  Rev is agnostic to all three major platforms.  But rev is kind of limited within internet facing browsers.  The second is development environment.  Rev's IDE is object centered as though it was an interface mockup tool.  The IDE has been localized for each of the three big platforms.  As with all xtalk tools, rev is a object centered message passing language in which events generate messages that are sent down an object stacking hierarchy until they find an object which has  script that has a handler that matches.  The handler is a subroutine written n the xtalk lexicon and syntax.  And this scripting language, the third aspect of a development system, is identical to all xtalk languages (except that it has a larger function library than most).

Rev can brag about its IDE and its cross platform development and delivery flexibility... But it had better admit that its language is xtalk and that rev neither invented it or significantly improved it.
 

-----Original Message-----
From: "Björnke von Gierke" <bvg at mac.com>
To: "How to use Revolution" <use-revolution at lists.runrev.com>
Sent: 12/20/2008 4:47 AM
Subject: Re: [OT] If programming languages were religions...


On 20 Dec 2008, at 04:41, Randall Reetz wrote:

> I wish people would use the term xtalk when refering to this  
> language its structure and lexicon both come intact from hypercard  
> and smalltalk before that.  Revenue is a great integration synthesis  
> of xtalk and a cross platform runtime engines, but the language is  
> xtalk all the way in.  Seems only fair.  No?

No. Time for car analogies (Noooo!!!):

If someone comes to the car salesman, and says "I'd want to buy a  
Lexus". Would you argue he'd be better off to say "I'd want to buy any  
car"?

Xtalk is a loose description of  types of languages, which includes  
hypercard as well as Rev. Of course the analogy will break down  
quickly if you ask 10 xtalk followers whether applescript is an xtalk  
language or not.

Describing stuff is always hard, especially with the name trinity of  
RunRev marketing, but using xtalk for just one language will probably  
garner you some internet hate :)

Have Fun
Björnke
-- 

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