Re: [Pharo-users] perspective request for those earning a living from Smalltalk

[jtuc...@objektfabrik.de]

Petr,

I've been working as a Consultant for many big corporations (mainly in 
VA Smalltalk) since 1996. The situation you describe is very well known 
to me. But in my opinion there is no technical reason for this. It's a 
managerial problem. Ever since IBM went out to their customers and told 
them to move to Java for the better ini the mid-90ies, managers wanted 
the Smalltalk projects to go away as fast as possible. Nobody asked why 
IBM was still happily using VisualAge Smalltalk internally at that time 
frame


So the Smalltalk projects were declared legacy by Management. 
Replacement projects were started with big efforts and optimism. Some 
went well, some somewhat came to fly in a bit more than double the time 
and much more times the costthan planned, some failed miserably. One 
thing was in common to the replacement projects all over the place: they 
took much longer, turned out to be much mor complicated and took a lot 
more manpower than anybody had ever imagined.


So two important things happened:

1) People were told the old Smalltalk stuff would be gone soon, so if 
you wanted to be a valued and appreciated staff member, you better stay 
away from these projects
2) The people who knew the business and technical side of the existing 
projects were moved to the new projects. Some liked it (because of 1) 
some were frustrated (because they knew / feared the new project was 
going to be a death march)



Over the first 2 years or so, nobody realized how bad the situation 
really was. It was easy to postpone user requirements to the new 
project, accumulate more and more manpower in the new project and still 
keep up green flags everywhere.


...until yellow was the new green and users/stakeholders wanted the new 
features NOW - and not one day when the replacement project would become 
real.


So the remaining manpower in the old project (not the ones with lots of 
experience and knowledge) had to extend the old system, integrate it 
with the new system (thereby implementing all the stuff that IBM once 
told their management would never be possible in Smalltalk) and keep it 
up and ranning year after year. Nobody ever said Thank You or would 
appreciate the work they did. Because that was old stuff anyways and was 
already irrelevant.



Some of these old systems still exist today, serving users every single 
day, while some of the new systems never appeared. No manpower was ever 
added to these projects, and never would anybody ever say: okay, guys, 
you won. They still work on legacy code and try to do their best to 
fulfill user requirements. While on other projects that never see the 
light of day, people get appreciation, are allowed to work with new 
technologies and do cool stuff. Nobody ever asked the Smalltalkers 
whether they could do that as well, because "if you want to do web, you 
need to do Java". IBM said so, you know (and many other consultants as 
well).


So this is why new people try to stay away from these old projects. This 
is why the remaining staff is frustrated and this is why nobody allows 
them to do the cool things that Smalltalk can do as well as the others. 
They are just required to fix bugs, add new features in the old GUIs and 
else keep silent. Some of them were trying to fight this and tried to 
prove Smalltalk's strengths, but back then nobody would listen. One day 
they gave up.



Management still frustrates people every. single. day.


Just my opinion


Joachim




Am 22.10.17 um 18:56 schrieb Petr Fischer:

Here. (But from one point of view, it's a litte misery, 10-20 year old code 
sometimes, a mess, old VAST, absolutely no interest from young colleagues with 
no experience to willingly learn something about Smalltalk etc etc.).

If I bring up enough arguments, we will use Gemstone+Pharo tools in the future, 
which is a dream for me... but, we will see...

pf


At https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15523807
the question is asked... "Does anyone on here program in Smalltalk
professionally? Not to get off topic, but I'm curious and would like to
know how it stacks up compared to what they did previously? "

If you've earning a living from programming Smalltalk, please drop a
comment there.

cheers -ben




--
---
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

Re: [Pharo-users] perspective request for those earning a living from Smalltalk

[Stephane Ducasse]

Push petr! We are trying hard to make Pharo really a different
programming experience and slowly we are getting there.

Stef

On Sun, Oct 22, 2017 at 6:56 PM, Petr Fischer  wrote:
> Here. (But from one point of view, it's a litte misery, 10-20 year old code 
> sometimes, a mess, old VAST, absolutely no interest from young colleagues 
> with no experience to willingly learn something about Smalltalk etc etc.).
>
> If I bring up enough arguments, we will use Gemstone+Pharo tools in the 
> future, which is a dream for me... but, we will see...
>
> pf
>
>> At https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15523807
>> the question is asked... "Does anyone on here program in Smalltalk
>> professionally? Not to get off topic, but I'm curious and would like to
>> know how it stacks up compared to what they did previously? "
>>
>> If you've earning a living from programming Smalltalk, please drop a
>> comment there.
>>
>> cheers -ben
>

Re: [Pharo-users] perspective request for those earning a living from Smalltalk

[Petr Fischer]

Here. (But from one point of view, it's a litte misery, 10-20 year old code 
sometimes, a mess, old VAST, absolutely no interest from young colleagues with 
no experience to willingly learn something about Smalltalk etc etc.).

If I bring up enough arguments, we will use Gemstone+Pharo tools in the future, 
which is a dream for me... but, we will see...

pf

> At https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15523807
> the question is asked... "Does anyone on here program in Smalltalk
> professionally? Not to get off topic, but I'm curious and would like to
> know how it stacks up compared to what they did previously? "
> 
> If you've earning a living from programming Smalltalk, please drop a
> comment there.
> 
> cheers -ben

Re: [Pharo-users] perspective request for those earning a living from Smalltalk

[Mariano Martinez Peck]

Done :)

On Sun, Oct 22, 2017 at 10:33 AM, Ben Coman  wrote:

> At https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15523807
> the question is asked... "Does anyone on here program in Smalltalk
> professionally? Not to get off topic, but I'm curious and would like to
> know how it stacks up compared to what they did previously? "
>
> If you've earning a living from programming Smalltalk, please drop a
> comment there.
>
> cheers -ben
>



-- 
Mariano
http://marianopeck.wordpress.com