I think you have nailed it, Joachim! The development environment is per se very productive and easy to use and learn but at the moment you need something that isn't present in your code library, things can get very hard. Well, that's not really new and not only a problem that concerns Smalltalk, but with the greater number of developers in other languages chances are that someone already wrote some code concerning your needs.
Well I will go back to my coding here now ;-) Cheers, Paulo On 10/20/2017 09:23 AM, jtuc...@objektfabrik.de wrote: > First of all: I'd say the question itself is not a question but an > excuse. I am not arguing there are enough Smalltalkers or cheap ones. > But I think the question is just a way of saying "we don't want to do > it for reasons that we ourselves cannot really express". If you are a > good developer, learning Smalltalk is easy. If you are a good > developer you've heard the sentence "we've taken the goos parts from > x,y,z and Smalltalk" at least twice a year. So you most likely would > like to learn it anyways. > > A shortage of developers doesn't exist. What exists is an > unwillingness of companies to get people trained in a technology. If > Smalltalk was cool and great in their opinion, they wouldn't care. > It's that simple. As a consultant, I've heard that argument so often. > Not ferom Startups, but from insurance companies, Banks or Car > manufacturers who spend millions on useless, endless meetings and > stuff instead of just hiring somebody to teach a couple of developers > Smalltalk. It's just a lie: the shortage of Smalltalk developers is > not a problem. > > And, to be honest: what is it we actually are better in by using > Smalltalk? > Can we build cool looking web apps in extremely short time? No. > Can we build mobile Apps with little effort? No. > Does our Smalltalk ship lots of great libraries for all kinds of > things that are not availabel in similar quality in any other language? > Are we lying when we say we are so extremely over-productive as > compared to other languages? > > I know, all that live debugging stuff and such is great and it is much > faster to find & fix a bug in Smalltalk than in any other environment > I've used so far. But that is really only true for business code. When > I need to connect to things or want to build a modern GUI or a web > application with a great look&feel, I am nowhere near productive, > because I simply have to build my own stuff or learn how to use other > external resources. If I want to build something for a mobile device, > I will only hear that somebody somewhere has done it before. No docs, > no proof, no ready-made tool for me. > > > Shortage of developers is not really the problem. If Smalltalk was as > cool as we like to make ourselves believe, this problem would be > non-existent. If somebody took out their iPad and told an audience: > "We did this in Smalltalk in 40% of the time it would have taken in > Swift", and if that something was a must-have for people, things would > be much easier. But nobody has. > > > I am absolutely over-exaggerating, because I make my living with an > SaaS product written in Smalltalk (not Pharo). I have lots of fun with > Smalltalk and - as you - am convince that many parts of what we've > done so far would've taken much longer or even be impossible in other > languages. But the advantage was eaten by our extremely steep learning > curve for web technologies and for building something that works > almost as well as tools like Angular or jQuery Mobile. > > Smalltalk is cool, and the day somebody shows me something like > Google's flutter in Smalltalk, I am ready to bet a lot on a bright > future for Smalltalk. But until then, I'd say these arguments about > productivity are just us trying to make ourselves believe we're still > the top of the food chain. We've done that for almost thirty years now > and still aren't ready to stop it. But we've been lying to ourselves > and still do so. > > I don't think there is a point in discussing about the usefulness of a > language using an argument like the number or ready-made developers. > That is just an argument they know you can't win. The real question is > and should be: what is the benefit of using Smalltalk. Our > productivity argument is a lie as soon as we have to build something > that uses or runs on technology that has been invented after 1990. > > > Okay, shoot ;-) > > Joachim > >
