Re: Status of Strongtalk C++ code: VM stability and progress on a graphical debugger

Hi Gilad

>Erlang
> uses an actor model.  Each actor (Process in Erlang) has its own thread of
> control, but they communicate only via asynchronous message passing. No
> state is shared among actors - only stateless values are passed among them.
> It's much easier and more natural to program with.

When I first came across objects (1990) this is exactly how I thought
objects worked.
Sending asynchronous messages to concurrent processes. This made sense
to me coming from a embedded
background where I was use to asynchronous queues and concurrent
processes. The when I looked into OO code (C++) I realised
that there weren't any messages, and everything was synchronous.
Reading Grady Booch
(Object Orientated Analysis and Design with Applications) convinced me
that I was wrong
and Bjarne Stroustrup was right.  Objects have nothing to do with
messages, all you need is a vtable :)

It took the discovery of Smalltalk to realise that I was right about
messages, and the discovery of Erlang to realise
that I was right about concurrency too :)

Now I can't be the only one out there that has had this experience of
having to unlearn their own intuition.
Objects are intuitive, yet the popular form of OO and the concurrency
model in which it is used are both anti-intuitive.

If anyone can realise these simple intuitive ideas in a production
quality environment then I am sure it would
have wide spread appeal.
 Paul.

(A long suffering Java programmer :))
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