I like that piece a lot, seeing exactly the described situation in large enterprises.
I made a strategic decision to go with Pharo for the long run for my solutions because it is a stable base on which to build (ok, there are evolutions, but fundamentally, I can rely on it being under control and can maintain solutions in a version). The rationale is that at a deep level I am really fed up with having to deal with accidental complexity (now having to deal with Spark/Scala/sbt/Java/maven stuff) that makes the dev focus 80% technology drag and 20% net business contribution. One key thing is that a team needs guidance and Smalltalk makes it easier due to well known ways of doing things. Now we miss the boat on mobile and bigdata, but this is solvable. If we had an open Java bridge (and some people in the community have it for Pharo but do not open source it - so this is eminently doable) + Pharo as an embeddable piece (e.g. like Tcl and Lua) and not a big executable we would have a way to embed Pharo in a lot of places (e.g. in the Hadoop ecosystem where fast starting VMs and small footprint would make the cluster capacity x2 or x3 vs uberjars all over the place) this would be a real disruption. Think about being able to call Pharo from JNA https://github.com/java-native-access/jna the same way we use C with UFFI. Smalltalk argument for me is that it makes development bearable (even fun and enjoyable would I say) vs the other stacks. That matters. Phil On Thu, Oct 26, 2017 at 12:46 AM, Andrew Glynn <aglyn...@gmail.com> wrote: > There’s other questions that are relevant to me: > > > > Do I give a f*** about cool looking web apps? No, I don’t use web apps if > in any way I can avoid it. > > > > Do I give a f*** about mobile apps? No, the screen’s too small to read > anything longer than a twit, or anyone with anything worthwhile to say. > > > > Do I give a f*** about the number of libraries in other languages? No, > because most of them are crap in every language I’ve had to work in, and > the base languages are crap so they have to keep changing radically, and > libraries and frameworks therefore also have to and never get any better. > The few that are worthwhile I can almost always use from Smalltalk without > a problem (read, Blender, ACT-R and Synapse, since every other > library/framework I’ve used outside Smalltalk has been a waste of time). > > > > Do I give a f*** about implementing a complex piece of machine learning > software in 22 hours, compared to 3 months for the Java version? Well, > actually yes, I do, because that was 3 months of my life down the toilet > for something that is too slow to be useful in Java. > > > > Any argument depends on your priorities. I’ve written tons of web apps, > because I needed to get paid. I’ve written better shitty mobile apps than > the average shitty mobile apps. However, I’m not going to do any of that > any longer in crap that never improves, because after 26 years the > irritability it produces is more than it’s worth. > > > > A few weeks ago, a recruiter that specializes in Smalltalk called me about > a job, although they were well aware I live 1500 miles away from the city I > lived in when I had worked through them, to see if I’d be willing to move > back there for a job. That sounds like another ‘there aren’t enough > Smalltalk developers”, but it wasn’t, because the job wasn’t writing > Smalltalk. It was writing Java. > > > > The person hiring, though, wouldn’t look at anyone who didn’t write > Smalltalk, because “people who grew up with Java don’t know how to write > code”. I don’t agree with that, I’ve known a (very few) good Java > developers. I would say, though, that I’ve known far more incompetent ones > than good ones, and I can’t think of any incompetent Smalltalk developers > off the top of my head. > > > > Nor have I ever heard a developer in Smalltalk, or Haskell, or LISP, or > even C, complain about how hard maintaining state is or coming up with > various hacks to avoid it, which seems to be the main point of every > JavaScript based ‘technology’. An application is by definition a > state-machine, which implies plenty about JS developers on the whole. > > > > If you’re a good developer you can write good code in (nearly) anything. > My question then is why would you want to write in crap? The better > question is why aren’t there more good developers in *any* language? > > > > Every project I have been able to do in Smalltalk, though, has had one > thing in common, the “shit has to work”. Companies do use it, in fact I > could name 4 large enterprises I’ve worked for who’ve written their own > dialects, and they all use it only when “shit has to work”. They know it’s > more productive, they also know using it for more things would increase the > availability of Smalltalk developers. > > > > Why do they not do it? One reason, though it takes a while to recognize > it, because management doesn’t admit even to themselves why they do it, or > not very often. Being inefficient, as long as it doesn’t ‘really’ matter, > is an advantage to large enterprises because they have resources smaller > competitors don’t. > > > > Why don’t their competitors do it? Because they can’t see past an hourly > rate, what’s fashionable, or just new, or because their customers can’t. > Put more generally, average stupidity that isn’t corrected by the market. > Fashion affects smaller companies more than larger ones, because they can’t > afford a few customers walking away because they wanted an app in Electron, > even if they can’t give any relevant reason for wanting it, and even the > samples on the Electron site don’t work. > > > > Enterprises can, and do use Smalltalk when it matters. When it doesn’t, > it’s to their advantage to promote things that are inefficient, buggy and > unreliable. > > > > Cost is relevant, but not in the simple way people look at things. A > crucial but rarely mentioned perspective on its relevance is that while > Java based software runs TV set top boxes, Smalltalk based software runs > things like medical equipment, automated defense systems, tanks, etc. Cost > becomes largely irrelevant when ‘shit has to work’. > > > > Productivity is primarily relevant to less talented developers, in an > inversely sense, since unproductive environments and attitudes have a > leveling tendency in general, and more specifically make accomplishing what > the less talented are capable of in any environment sufficiently laborious > for them to have a role. Capability in Smalltalk, as implied by the person > hiring for the Java role I mentioned, is a fairly decent means of judging > whether someone is a so-so developer or a good one. > > > > The productivity argument is realistically only relevant in the context of > an already higher hourly cost. Given that it is relevant at that point, > companies that know Smalltalk is more productive would use it outside > things that have to be 100%, *if* their own productivity were relevant to > the same degree that competitors’ productivity is inversely relevant. > > > > All these ways of looking at it are contingent perspectives though. Yes, > if the number of libraries is relevant to you, Smalltalk is less > attractive, but that’s only a contingent phenomenon based on the relative > popularity of Java and JavaScript, as a result it can’t be used as > explanatory *for* that popularity. All the ways of looking at it that > are fully determinate are determinate via contingencies of that kind, which > for the most part *are* precisely the other perspectives, including > productivity, cost, availability of developers, etc. None of them is *in > itself* anything but a result of the others. > > > > If availability of developers is contingent on popularity (and further, > popularity contingent on industry attitudes), to use an example already > mentioned in Joachim’s post, then his simultaneous posit of library > availability is if anything more contingent on the same popularity, so > positing it as a cause and not a result, or merely a correlate, of > popularity is incoherent. We can go one step further, and demonstrate that > even when large enterprises make something that works reliably available, > they fail to promote and support it, which destroys the market for reliable > tooling by simultaneously owning it while not promoting it, something IBM > is particularly good at. But IBM can’t (and if they can’t, neither can any > other company) operate that way without the tacit agreement of the > industry. > > > > To understand it in a more general way, software development has to be > looked at in the context where it occurs, and how it’s determined to a > large degree by that context, with a specific difference. That difference > is itself implicit in the context, i.e. capitalism, but only *purely > *effective > in software development. It’s a result of virtualization as an implicit > goal of capitalism, and the disruptions implicit in the virtual but so far > only realized completely in software. In terms of that understanding, the > analysis of virtualization and disruption as inherent to capitalism is > better accomplished in Kapital than in any more recent work. > > > > Or you can simply decide, as I’ve done recently, that working in ways and > with tools that prevent doing good work in a reasonable timeframe isn’t > worthwhile *to you,* no matter how popular those ways and tools might be, > or what the posited reasons are, since at the end popularity is only > insofar as it *already* is. What those tools and methods are depends to > a degree on your priorities, but if developers are *engineers* those > priorities can’t be completely arbitrary. Engineers are defined by their > ability to make things work. > > > > Software as virtual is inherently disruptive, and the software industry > disrupts itself too often and too easily to build on anything. A further > disruption caused by developers, *as* engineers, refusing to work with > crap that *doesn’t*, i.e. insisting on being engineers, while in itself > merely an aggravation of the disruptive tendencies, might have an inverse > result. > > > > Using a stable core of technologies as the basis for a more volatile set > of products, in the way nearly every other industry does, is the best means > we know of to build things both flexibly and reasonably efficiently. The > computer hardware industry is the extreme example of this, while the > software industry is the extreme contradiction. > > > > *From: *Pharo-users <pharo-users-boun...@lists.pharo.org> on behalf of > David Mason <dma...@ryerson.ca> > *Reply-To: *Any question about pharo is welcome < > pharo-users@lists.pharo.org> > *Date: *Tuesday, October 24, 2017 at 11:52 AM > *To: *Any question about pharo is welcome <pharo-users@lists.pharo.org> > *Subject: *Re: [Pharo-users] Smalltalk Argument > > > > 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 > > >
