3 ms·

OK, we get it. You're a Smalltalk fan and you believe it's the best language for teaching. I don't disagree, and certainly I'm not going to stop you if you deci

OK, we get it. You're a Smalltalk fan and you believe it's the best language for teaching. I don't disagree, and certainly I'm not going to stop you if you decide to teach people Smalltalk. But why do you have to undermine efforts by others who do valuable work, but using a different language? There's nothing constructive about that.

kab 16y ago
Because Smalltalk is superior, and Rubyists are ignorant of its superiority, and that ignorance results in inferior reinvention of already-existing wheels.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  You do know that many prominent Rubyists were doing work in Smalltalk way back when, right? For example, here's Uncle Bob talking about the two: http://en.oreilly.com/rails2009/public/schedule/detail/8482 http://en.oreilly.com/rails2009/public/schedule/detail/8482 You may dispute his opinion, and that's fine. But Ruby's lineage descends directly from Smalltalk, so regardless of preference, I think it's unfair to suggest that all Rubyists are totally ignorant of Smalltalk.
  - kab 16y ago
    Robert Martin, to my knowledge, was never a Smalltalker, and received an enormous amount of flack in the Smalltalk community for making a lot negative, uninformed statements about Smalltalk at that conference. Uncle Bob started, by his own admission, as a Cobol programmer and later transitioned into C++ and Java, where he did the bulk of his work in OO consulting and authoring. He only started to branch out into more "exotic" languages a few years ago.
    - steveklabnik 16y ago
      My bad. When I first watched that video, I thought I specifically remembered Martin talking about the community in an inclusive way. So he's a bad example. Regardless, I still stand by the original point: I wouldn't make such sweeping generalizations about the ignorance of an entire community of people.

3 ms·

OK, we get it. You're a Smalltalk fan and you believe it's the best language for teaching. I don't disagree, and certainly I'm not going to stop you if you deci

by adambyrtek 16y ago

kab 16y ago
Because Smalltalk is superior, and Rubyists are ignorant of its superiority, and that ignorance results in inferior reinvention of already-existing wheels.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  You do know that many prominent Rubyists were doing work in Smalltalk way back when, right? For example, here's Uncle Bob talking about the two: http://en.oreilly.com/rails2009/public/schedule/detail/8482 http://en.oreilly.com/rails2009/public/schedule/detail/8482 You may dispute his opinion, and that's fine. But Ruby's lineage descends directly from Smalltalk, so regardless of preference, I think it's unfair to suggest that all Rubyists are totally ignorant of Smalltalk.
  - kab 16y ago
    Robert Martin, to my knowledge, was never a Smalltalker, and received an enormous amount of flack in the Smalltalk community for making a lot negative, uninformed statements about Smalltalk at that conference. Uncle Bob started, by his own admission, as a Cobol programmer and later transitioned into C++ and Java, where he did the bulk of his work in OO consulting and authoring. He only started to branch out into more "exotic" languages a few years ago.
    - steveklabnik 16y ago
      My bad. When I first watched that video, I thought I specifically remembered Martin talking about the community in an inclusive way. So he's a bad example. Regardless, I still stand by the original point: I wouldn't make such sweeping generalizations about the ignorance of an entire community of people.