Dolphin vs Smalltalk MT

From: "AndrewGinMD" <[hidden email]>
Subject: Dolphin vs Smalltalk MT
Date: July 21, 2002 6:18 AM

Hello
 My personal experience has been in utilities C/C++, and small personal
projects with the old Digitalk ST/V and WindowBuilderPro (before STExpress).
I
am seeking some comments on Dolphin vs Smalltalk MT, both from advocates,
and
devil's advocate, in terms of product stability, support, and productivity.
Thanks,
Andrew

Sergey --

"Sergey Nartovich" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:gsh%8.5149$[hidden email]...
>
> From: "AndrewGinMD" <[hidden email]>
> Subject: Dolphin vs Smalltalk MT
> Date: July 21, 2002 6:18 AM
>
> Hello
>  My personal experience has been in utilities C/C++, and small personal
> projects with the old Digitalk ST/V and WindowBuilderPro (before
STExpress).
> I
> am seeking some comments on Dolphin vs Smalltalk MT, both from advocates,
> and
> devil's advocate, in terms of product stability, support, and
productivity.
> Thanks,
> Andrew
>
>

My impressions of Smalltalk MT:

1. Smalltalk MT is a _very_ Windows-centric Smalltalk, even more so than
Dolphin or ObjectStudio.  The best analogy I can draw is writing MFC code in
Visual C++.  In fact, many of the tools, the look-and-feel, and architecture
of Smalltalk MT reflect Visual C++ and MFC.

2. STMT is _compiled_ into native machine instructions.  This makes STMT
_very_ fast, but it also makes STMT the most unstable Smalltalk I've ever
used.

3. STMT does follow the Smalltalk tradition of building the development
environment in Smalltalk.  I've sucessfully made major changes to the STMT
development environment with little effort.  However, because of the design
goals behind STMT, there are potholes one can easily fall into.

4. I've received excellent support from David Anderson of Genify here in the
US.

5. STMT, because of its focus on performance, has a very terse class library
that "gets the job done".  It isn't very abstract.  For instance, there is
no MVC or MVP in STMT.  The application framework is a wrapper around the
Windows messaging system. If you're an ex-MFC programmer, this will feel
like a warm blanket.  If you're from a more traditional Smalltalk, it will
feel like you're coding in C++.

6. STMT does have a C++ _slant_.  There's a built-in [] case: [], which is
often discussed in Smalltalk circles, but never implemented ;->.  If you
look at the formatting of the Smalltalk code in the STMT framework, it looks
very much like C++ code -- it just happens to be written in Smalltalk.

7. They follow Microsoft conventions throughout the framework.  This means
Hungarian notation.  Again, if you're an ex-MFC programmer, this will just
seem "right".  If not, it will seem very strange and you might wonder what
m_, psz, lpcstr means.

8. STMT has _fantastic_ integration with C/C++ functions.  Use simply write:

9. STMT has a poor interface builder (unstable) and requires Visual C++ (or
other) resource compiler, as it depends highly on Windows resources.  I'm
hoping this gets fixed within the next few releases.

WINAPI MessageBox: 'Help, is this Smalltalk?'

In any Smalltalk method and it will call that API function.

Final notes:  I've _played_ around with STMT since version 3.1.  However, I
never seem to make much progress because of various stability issues.  I've
done some of my work fixing and tweaking to STMT, but I'm not currently
using it for any production development.  I have used it to build several
command-line tools, and it works well for this.  Every new version of STMT
gets better; the current version is 4.2.  I figure within the next few
releases STMT will have most of its major quirks worked out and stability
greatly improved.

I will continue to use STMT, but I'm going to hold off using it for
commercial/production code.

My impressions of Dolphin:

1. Due to the stability issues I've had with STMT, and the fact that I have
some Windows specific software I'd like to write, I decided to finally buy
Dolphin XP Pro last week.  Dolphin is absolutely _rock solid_.  It has only
crashed on me _once_ (this was my fault too), and I've been doing some
rather hazardous things:  Like try to use Direct3D and DirectSound!  (It
works!)

2. The Dolphin toolset is very mature, solid, and colorful.  The first time
I loaded up a Dolphin image I was just in awe.  The new Refactoring Browser
in XP is _fantastic_ and I'm very productive.

3. The Dophin "package" concept and manager is very intuitive and easy to
use.  It works very well.

4. Dolphin is a "Windows only" Smalltalk, and it does have some
Windows-centric concepts strewn throughout, but these are done in a very
Smalltalk way.  The MVP concept is well done and I've built several great
Windows applications with little effort.  To access external code and
objects, one extends an existing framework in Dolphin and addes methods to
these classes.  I've done tons of this over the past few weeks, specifically
for DirectX 8, and it works perfectly.

5. The Resource Editor, which is what you use to build UI templates, is very
stable and works well.  My only wish is that one could edit all kinds of
Windows resources and store them in a class.

6. Dolphin isn't compiled into native code.  Because of this it might,
potentially, not be as fast as Smalltalk MT.  However, in my experience,
this hasn't made much of a difference.  My DirectX-based game works just as
well in Dolphin as it did in STMT and I've having fewer overall stability
issues during development because Dolphin has that "protected" operating
environment of byte-code.  The only slight issue I've run into is related to
garbage collection, and I know of some simple things that will allow me to
work around these.

7. The Dolphin "world" is very large, the newsgroup for it is very active,
and I've leared a lot by searching Google groups.  While I think STMT will
get this eventually, it will take time.

8. The Dolphin documentation seems to be out-of-date, but this is minor.
Most of the existing documentation matches the current version and Smalltalk
is Smalltalk to a large extent.

9. The idea of a "Panic" button is great.  I've used this many times and it
works very well.  STMT could use something like this.

Final notes:  As of two weeks ago, I'm using Dolphin XP Pro for all of my
Windows-specific development.  This is primarily entertainment software.
I've been very happy with Dolphin and feel it was a great purchase.  I
highly recommend it.  My only major complaint with Dolphin, in fact most
Windows-centric Smalltalks, is that the concept of Windows Resources is
weakly integrated.  I'd really like to see the Resource Editor support
icons, bitmaps, sounds, movies, versions, string tables, and arbitrary
binary data.

I hope this helps.  Since I like covering all of my bases, I've bought both.
I'd recommend the same.  The developers version of STMT is only USD$99, and
Dolphin starts at around USD$50 for the Starter version (I think, you'd
better check).

Happy coding and best regards,
Jeffrey D. Panici
Worker Bee Solutions, Inc.

Hi Jeffery
Thanks for your commets on Dolphin vs ST MT.
I have played with Dolphin personal edition, on and off for weeks , and ST MT
evaluation for minutes. Your comments are very helpful. I especially appreciate
your comments on comparing 1) stability, 2) MFC experience. and 3) performance.
One of the things that have bugged me about MFC and VC++ application wizard is
all the code that it spits out and my trying to 'add code'. After using
Digitalk ST/V for lots of little programming 'snippets' on an old '486 Win3.1,
HP omnibook laptop with B&W screen and built-in pop-out mouse,
its nice to newer choices.
I guess I kick the tires until the evalutation edition expires, then I decide
on ST MT.
Thanks again for taking your time to reply.
Andrew

Sergey,

compared to Dolphin ST, Smalltalk MT is much more like C++/MFC Programming
in an Smalltalk Syntax/Environemt.

Building GUI applications in Smalltalk MT might be familiar for somebody
with an C++/MFC background. "Just" knowing MVC/MVP it's like a (strange!)
new(?) world.

For me Smalltalk MT has some drawbacks on the productive side (GUI-Builder,
abstraction level of the class library ....).

On the other side: If you are planning to do more low-level things (non-COM
DLLs, Direct-X, calling "strange" C/C++ code or being called from that)
Smalltalk MT is your friend.

Personally I'm using Dolphin XP for my daily work and I'm calling Smalltalk
MT DLLs for all of the low-level stuff.

Hope this helps.

Udo




Sergey Nartovich wrote: