In addition to the excellent replies you have already received I would
like to offer this from Stack Overflow.
In their 2017 Developer Survey, Smalltalk was the second most loved
language at 67% of developers surveyed. This is a regular occurrence.
Now if you look at the rest of the survey you will see that these are
not people using Smalltalk in their job. Smalltalk doesn't appear
elsewhere in the survey. It isn't on the radar. However, developers love
Smalltalk. Should a shop be open minded enough to use Smalltalk, I do
not think it would be difficult to find people who would love to have
that opportunity.
A good developer can become proficient at Smalltalk in a reasonable
amount of time. In addition to the natural virtues of Smalltalk. You
also have wonderful communities eager and ready to help people join the
family and become productive. The Pharo and Squeak mailing lists are
very friendly, with plenty of extremely knowledgeable programmers ready
to help.
The other nice thing about Smalltalk is that it has history. It is not a
fad. It is not an immature child. Many Smalltalkers have more years
experience in Smalltalk than some of the creators of other languages
have birthdays. There is a vast amount of knowledge and experience in
this community that doesn't exist in most places. Because of this
environment, an experienced programmer can receive wisdom and
understanding and become a better programmer. Do not underestimate the
value of gray beard Smalltalkers.
A person can read the survey and come away thinking that Smalltalk is
irrelevant. It is very relevant. It just isn't as visible as other
languages clamoring for the spotlight. It is mature. It doesn't care to
be the cool kid.
Yes, OSS Smalltalks have some weaknesses that are actively being worked
on. We haven't arrived. But we are well on the journey. And to quote our
favorite prophet Alan Kay, "The best way to predict the future is to
invent it."
Join us. Help invent the future. Use Pharo to invent the future you want.
There are people out there who want to be a part of this. But they have
to pay the bills. Help more people pay the bills with Smalltalk. :)
Jimmie
On 10/19/2017 02:04 AM, Paulo R. Dellani wrote:
Dear all,
after using Smalltalk for several years I developed a passion for the
language (how not to?), and Pharo is just so great to develop with.
So thank you guys for keeping this wonderful project running.
Unfortunately, it is not easy to always point out why Smalltalk
should be employed as "main development language" in a team
or for a project. In the last discussion of this sort I was confronted
with the question "where are we going to get new smalltalk
developers if our startup grows or if you go?". Well, I had no
good answer to that. What would have you answered?
Cheers,
Paulo
