Peter,
our mail provider decided to move all of the pharo mailing list messages
to the spam folder, so I haven't seen many messages in the last days. I
was already starting to wonder why nobody ever answered my posts ;-)
Your smalltalk express idea sounds interesting. I look forward to trying
it.
Joachim
Am 20.10.17 um 16:21 schrieb Peter Fisk:
Thank you Joachim!
That is the most honest assessment of the situation of Smalltalk in
2017 that I have ever seen.
And I agree with you 100%.
We need a new Smalltalk which is both "cool" and can seamlessly
integrate with all of the latest web technologies.
I will be releasing a new Smalltalk framework very shortly called
"Smalltalk Express".
The interpreter is written in the "Go" language and can run on all of
the major web platforms such as Google, Heroku, etc.
I use Pharo to manage the Smalltalk code.
Here is a new blog that I have started to discuss the project.
https://smalltalkexpress.quora.com/
Also, I have reserved the web address "smalltalk.express" for use once
the code goes live.
There is a video in the blog post so you can get an idea of where
things stand right now.
-- Peter
On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 3:23 AM, jtuc...@objektfabrik.de
<mailto:jtuc...@objektfabrik.de> <jtuc...@objektfabrik.de
<mailto: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
--
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