On Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:02:47 +0100, Mark Volkmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I don't have a lot of experience with Smalltalk yet, but I really love
what I've seen so far.
I'm curious what experienced Smalltalkers see as some of the reasons why
it doesn't attract more attention.
Me thinks that the Smalltalk community is healthy and vibrant--it is
"just" a community form one would not expect for Ruby or Python or Perl,
etc. To get impression of my impression take a look at what *actually*
happened during the *recent* months:
- Exupery (native x86 methods) powers Huemul
- Seaside (web++ framework++) powers GLASS
- Hydra (multiple parallel .images) powers Croquet .images
- Google hires developers with deep Smalltalk experience
- two more gods to be worshipped in the VM temple ;)
- Squeak powers NewSpeak
- new book Squeak by Example (creative commons license)
- port of OpenDBX to Squeak (still not on windoze)
- port of Squeak/VM to "another" smartphone platform ;)
- DrGeo made it to the XO (OLPC)
- fresh new subcommunity Pharo
- attempt? to port Moose (world class sw analysis) to Squeak
- Google hires developers with deep Smalltalk experience
- Squeak web site migrated to/powered by Aida/Web Squeak
- 4 (four) projects run through 2008's Goggle Summer of Code
- the "everybody needs it" Safara from GSoC as yet not in mainstream
- the "everybody needs it" Squeak GTK from GSoC as yet not in mainstream
- IBM builds Smalltalk IDE inside Eclipse
- Google hires developers with deep Smalltalk experience
- ESUG 2008 conference draws more attendands than ever
That list is of course incomplete, for example one wants to add the many
noobs who joined #squeak and the beginners mailing list.
I do not think that *soo* much is holding back Smalltalk ;)
/Klaus
--
"If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it".
Albert Einstein
I understand the issues with Smalltalk in the past related to license
costs and performance, but those have been addressed now. Have you tried
to convince someone to consider Smalltalk and failed to convince them?
Why do you think they rejected it? What improvements could be made to
current Smalltalk environments, especially Squeak, that might sway them?
For me the biggest issue has been trying to run my code from outside
Squeak. This includes running Squeak headless to do something script-
like and configuring a GUI application to run in a way that doesn't
require the user to know they are running Squeak. Both of these are
supposedly possible, but very difficult to get right.
---
Mark Volkmann
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