Path: news.daimi.aau.dk!news.uni-c.dk!newsfeed.sunet.se!news00.sunet.se!sunic!news99.sunet.se!news.funet.fi!news.eunet.fi!EU.net!Germany.EU.net!Dortmund.Germany.EU.net!Informatik.Uni-Dortmund.DE!polly!wr
From: wr@polly.informatik.uni-dortmund.de (Wilfried Rupflin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.beta
Subject: Re: What's wrong with this picture?
Date: 19 Dec 1995 16:26:01 GMT
Organization: CS Department, Dortmund University, Germany
Lines: 102
Sender: wr@informatik.uni-dortmund.de (Wilfried Rupflin)
Message-ID: <4b6p2p$dua@fbi-news.Informatik.Uni-Dortmund.DE>
References: <4aodps$70h@netnews.upenn.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: polly.informatik.uni-dortmund.de


>------  Wolfgang Ziller <wziller@math.upenn.edu>
>
>What's wrong with the BETA story?  It was supposed to be 
>the best thing that happened to OO since Simula...why isn't 

 ... true! During this years ECOOP you could here statements
like "If you are using a typed OOPL then stop and use Beta!"
fairly often.

>it being adopted more readily by companies?  The user base 
>for Eiffel or Dylan is much higher it seems (and there 
>
The user base for Eiffel seems to be (still) higher, indeed.
But it seems that very few people are *using* Eiffel really.
(That's at least my impression from discussions with Eiffel
users on various occasions, most recently when I had a
BETA tutorial at TH Darmstadt where Eiffel is used in
education.)

>isn't a full implementation of Dylan yet).  Is there 
>something wrong with the BETA language?
>
Why not put the question the other way around:
What's so special about C++ (or Visual Basic, if you like)
that 'everybody' is using it?
(There is a German proverb: "Leute, esst Sch... --
Milliarden Fliegen koennen nicht irren!" I can't translate
this literally but the sense is: The fact that the masses 
love something doesn't imply anything about its quality
or usefulness.)

So: There is nothing wrong with the BETA language!
The language and it's implementation is superb in any respect.
And: It works! And more: It can be used! You get a host
of libraries and interfaces, e.g. for Motif and truly
distributed applications.

>One language question (which I need answered in order to 
>compare Dylan and BETA -- I'm still not sure which to go 
>with).  Is it possible to add methods to a class without 
>having to rename the class.  I would think yes since 
>extension of patterns is allowed.
>
You are right in the case of virtual classes:

  A_class:         (# my_class:<  (# a: ... #); ... #);

  B_class: A_class (# my_class::< (# b: ... #); ... #);

In this example my_class is a virtual class which can
be extended without defining a new class name (this
feature is called direct qualification).

>Also, how fast are the executables that are generated by 
>the BETA compiler in comparison to compiled C++ code?
>
I'm not an expert for this (for me BETA is definitely
fast enough) but I remember that there was a discussion 
on this newsgroup in spring 
(cf. http://www.daimi.aau.dk/~beta/News/subject95.html )

Two citations only:

1) http://www.daimi.aau.dk/~beta/News/volume95/281.txt

From: jas@systematic.dk (Jacob Seligmann)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.beta
Subject: Re: BETA questions
Date: 20 Mar 1995 12:04:30 GMT
...
That being said, it is my experience that for the imperative parts of
the language, the efficiency of the Mjolner BETA code is roughly
equivalent to that of unoptimized C/C++.

2) http://www.daimi.aau.dk/~beta/News/volume95/311.txt

From: Jacob Seligmann <jas@systematic.dk>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.beta
Subject: Re: BETA questions
Date: 26 Apr 1995 11:14:12 GMT
...
So far, Mjolner Informatics has spent almost all their resources on
creating a stable implementation of the full BETA language on a range of
platforms, rather than optimizing the code. While I would personally
love to have a more efficient implementation, I believe this has been a
sound and professional approach. In the future, I certainly expect the
Mjolner BETA compiler to become much more efficient.


	Wilfried Rupflin


*---------------------------------------------------------------*
| Wilfried Rupflin        | wr@irb.informatik.uni-dortmund.de   |
|                         |                                 ___ |
| Universitaet Dortmund   |                                //// |
| FB Informatik, IRB      |                           UNI DO//  |
| Postfach 500 500        | Tel.: +49 231 755 2478   ___ ////   |
| D-44221 Dortmund 50     | Fax.: +49 231 755 2386   \*\\///    |
| Germany                 | Telex:  822465 unido d    \\\\/     |
*---------------------------------------------------------------*