Like a few others in this class I have just taken special topics 598 over the summer which focused on Smalltalk and its strict use of object oriented programming. As a result much of this chapter was a review of materials for me so I wasn't as engaged as I could have been. I will say though that this paper was very much a rambling mass of concepts that seemed to be related but it could have been made much more explicit. To begin by breifly talking about how often Noam Chomsky is quoted, compare that the the Gang of Four in Software, then discuss Smalltalk's architecture is a strange flow without a much more explicit attempt to clarify the links.
Overall, as I believe I've mentioned before that I had a bit of experience in Smalltalk, I can say that it is a powerful and flexible language that allows for a lot of interesting tricks. With its strong focus on small, modular classes and methods breaking down a problem into manageable pieces is pretty straightforward, and with Squeaks built in code refactoring tools its easy to accomplish. However, much like the comments on Functional programming, such small modular pieces can make keeping track of large enterprise sized system a pain. With it's focus on typing, inheritance, and other object oriented focuses (and the handy package organization techniques) it will be easier to logically organize systems to allow for the handling of large programs, but in the class project I can remember a few times still getting lost in what was going on because of all the methods and submethods.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
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