Path: news.daimi.aau.dk!news.uni-c.dk!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!newsfeed.tip.net!news.seinf.abb.se!eua.ericsson.se!erinews.ericsson.se!cnn.exu.ericsson.se!convex!cs.utexas.edu!news.sprintlink.net!parsifal.nando.net!grail519.nando.net!user From: denatale@nando.net (Rick DeNatale) Newsgroups: comp.object,comp.lang.beta,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.python,comp.lang.sather,comp.lang.smalltalk Subject: Re: Rapid Prototyping + statically-typed OOPLs? Date: 21 Jul 1995 03:55:48 GMT Organization: News & Observer Public Access Lines: 47 Message-ID: References: <805548287snz@galacta.demon.co.uk> <1995Jul13.154620.4333@rcmcon.com> <3ue9o1$q6t@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: grail519.nando.net X-Newsreader: Value-Added NewsWatcher 2.0b24.3+ Xref: news.daimi.aau.dk comp.object:33832 comp.lang.beta:477 comp.lang.c++:130290 comp.lang.eiffel:9516 comp.lang.python:5133 comp.lang.sather:1989 comp.lang.smalltalk:24681 In article , Ian.Mitchell@sunderland.ac.uk (Ian Mitchell) wrote: > In article <3ue9o1$q6t@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> johnson@sal.cs.uiuc.edu (Ralph Johnson) writes: > >Ian.Mitchell@sunderland.ac.uk (Ian Mitchell) writes: > >>One advantage to using C++ in prototyping is the terseness > >>of the language. It is easy to extract a call tree for each C++ > >>method and rework the O-O model in a language-independent > >>environment. > >"Terseness of the language"???? Programs in C++ are three > >times the size of the same programs in Smalltalk. Moreover, > >it is much easier to manipulate Smalltalk programs (at least > >in ParcPlace Smalltalk) because there is an OO representation > >of programs already developed. > I think there is some confusion here as to my use of the > word "terseness". I was thinking along the lines of the > following quote from Stroustrup (The C++ Programming > Language, 2nd Ed, page 6) : > "C was chosen as the base language for C++ because...it is > versatile, terse, and relatively low level" > In other words a terse language is a language with very few > keywords (C has 32, C++ has about 48). If by keywords, you mean reserved word then let's see Smalltalk has self, super, nil, true, false That's 6. If you want to count some reserved selectors like ifTrue: you might be able to triple or even quadruple that number. > (In actual fact, the relatively large size of C++ programs could > be viewed as a *function* of this terseness...) Maybe not. It might be the result of having a limited vocabulary instead of an extensible one, and as Ralph points out a reflective environment. -- Rick DeNatale Still trying to come up with a really cool Signature