PharoJS is working to give you that mobile app/browser app experience. As with others, we're not there yet, but getting there. See http://pharojs.org
The 67% loved means that 67% of people using Smalltalk (or perhaps have ever used it) want to continue - so it's presumably a high percentage of a smallish number of people. On 20 October 2017 at 03:23, jtuc...@objektfabrik.de < 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 > > > -- > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > Objektfabrik Joachim Tuchel mailto:jtuc...@objektfabrik.de > Fliederweg 1 http://www.objektfabrik.de > D-71640 Ludwigsburg http://joachimtuchel.wordpress.com > Telefon: +49 7141 56 10 86 0 Fax: +49 7141 56 10 86 1 > > >