From: Eric Armstrong <eric.armstrong@eng.sun.com>
Paul Fernhout wrote:
> Smalltalk is far more efficient. Java and C++ are still wrestling with
>
> solutions to problems that Smalltalk solved optimally a decade ago.
> Just
> one example -- modern Smalltalk VMs see practically no overhead from
> method lookup because they cache the last used selector lookup for an
> object. This handles 95% of such selector usages.
SmallTalk did indeed solve a number of issues. It also left a number
of issues unsolved. Although they break the pure O-O paradigm,
Java's native types provide important computational performance
benefits. They also provide for natural interfaces to real world I/O
devices. In general, Java's static typing provides both efficient
performance and compile-time error detection, both of which are
highly beneficial. Finally, in what appears in hindsight as a stroke of
genius, it's insistence on the elimination of macros and conditional
compilations has produced a language that is easily readable -- if
you know the language, you can read any application written in it,
unlike many of it's predecessor languages.
As indicated in my followup message, purely dynamic method
invocation isn't totally necessary, either, given the ability to cast
an object to an expected type. Some of the code is going to
look pretty ugly with that solution, though.
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