dcn@ihuxl.UUCP (Dave Newkirk) (07/23/84)
Smalltalk is an applications development environment, so a good question would be "what applications does Smalltalk do well?" My impression, from a presentation by Xerox, is that Smalltalk is roughly equivalent in power to Interlisp-D, and is now being used for the same types of jobs. This includes rapid prototyping, artificial intelligence, expert systems, simulation, and improved user interfaces. I think Smalltalk has some advantages over Interlisp due to its different language structure and the predefined objects, which make it easier to get started. New applications will probably emerge as Smalltalk environment leaves the ivory towers of Xerox. Dave Newkirk, ihnp4!ihuxl!dcn
mdrutenberg@watmath.UUCP (Mike Rutenberg) (07/27/84)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 84 10:08 EDT From: Marshall.wbst@Xerox.Arpa Subject: Re: Smalltalk Applications To: Smalltalk80Interest^.pa@Xerox.Arpa I wrote an extensive optical analysis package in Smalltalk-76 which was used in a successful product program. The ability in smalltalk of substituting objects obeying a numerical protocol for actual numbers was essential for the capability and efficiency of the program. If I had access to a version of smalltalk with fast floating-point and array operations it would be my language of choice for all numerical work. --Sidney