kilon alios <kilon.alios@gmail.com> writes:
Sort answer is no , Pharo does not try to replace C/C++. CAD plugins are indeed dlls and you will need C/C++ for that. I only Know Free Pascal as another language to generate DLLs but even in that case its extra work.
So if you look for the most direct solution then Pharo wont cut it and probably most other programming languages.
Theoretically of course its possible , but someone would need to implement this to make it easy to do and currently AFAIK none has.
Bare in mind that DLLs are strictly a C/C++ invention and definitely not how highly dynamic languages like Pharo work so there is no direct need for Pharo to do such thing cause it would complicate the workflow. I don't this is entirely true. AFAIKT Except Smalltalk can be used for generateing DLLs. However they are "compiling" to C AFAIKT. I'm quite sure that one can use ObjectArts Smalltalk also to generate niche Active X and I bet also shared libraries.
Regards Friedrich