[Edu-sig] Things to come

[Kirby Urner]

>Am I in Chinatown, or what?
>
>ART

Squeak is big, no question, although I thought CinCom's
SmallTalk more professional (I guess that's not the point).

A lot of the Squeak stuff is hype/vaporware at this 
time, but that's not necessarily bad.  You gotta dream
and those in the prophetic arts tend to bank on theirs
becoming self-fulfilling.

I'm not advocating that any one language try to establish
itself is "the" one and only.  Evolutionary patterns 
would suggest such approaches waste energy, at the 
expense of lost ground against competitors (while you're
busy establishing hegemony, the less vocal are quickly 
undermining your claims behind the scenes).

Python is a wonderful language and will provide a 
real boost to those who invest in it -- because it's
good "mind food".  But that doesn't for a moment mean
that other languages are any less advantaging, to 
those who commit to their study.  For me, it comes
back to paradigms, and whether you language has a 
clean and clear one.  I think Python does, in its
namespace/dictionary approach to OOP.  Scheme and 
SmallTalk do as well -- the thinking behind them is
of a high order (plus I've always been a fan of APL).

Kirby