

Smalltalk a good option? - zemariamm

Hello guys,
lately I've been more and more interested in smalltalk, I believe that both DabbleDB and auctomatic have their systems built on top of squeak, but is it pratical to build web app (which depend on a lot of out of the box libraries, for image processing and web crawling) in smalltalk?
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henning
What turns people off about Smalltalk is it doesn't talk to the rest of the
world the way you're used to so it takes getting used to.

You're certainly not going to have much luck using Smalltalk for prototyping
novel image processing algorithms.

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jrockway
Sorry about that, I accidentally downmodded you. I guess there is no undo
here. (I modded up some of your other comments to make up for the karma loss.
But it sucks that I can't just undo it :( )

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icey
I added a "free" upmod (i.e. one I wouldn't have otherwise given) just to undo
your mistaken downvote jrockway.

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Jesin
Ahh, but what if you're not the first person to do that? Be careful about
overcompensation.

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jrockway
Until we can cash in our karma for fame, fortune, and hot babes... I doubt we
need to worry about overcompensating :)

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jrockway
FWIW, I think Seaside with Magritte is The Way (tm) to do web apps. But you're
not going to find many libraries with Smalltalk. My recommendation is to just
port those to another language, then use that :)

I'm currently working on a port of Magritte to Perl called Ernst, and a new
web framework called Kiiteh. Both are very in-progress right now, so I don't
recommend even imagining that they exist. In a few months, though, that will
be the One True Way. Decent language, phenomenal library support, and a nice
way of easily writing web apps. :)

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systems
hey, you are that dude who wrote the catalyst book
(<http://www.packtpub.com/catalyst-perl-web-application/book>)

Nice to see you're into hacker news, anyway.

I would like to recommend Groovy and Grails, the main advantage of these over
Perl/Catalyst for me was portability, Groovy/Grails or GG just work better on
windows and SQL Server 2005. They were way easier to install, run and getting
started with. For example with Perl/Catalyst, Perl doesn't have a DBD::MSSql,
I think one can use JDBC or DBD::JDBC, but JDBC is at version 0.1 and
DBD::JDBC is also old DBD::Sybase, is well Sybase!

DB support of GG via hibernate is just way more robust.

Java have many many more active projects which GG relies on and can depend on.

Perl's CPAN is for sure fantastic, but CPAN is just not as portable as Java's
project, so with GG you know, and I know, that it will run on windows, with
Perl, there is no guaranty

Finally the moral is, with open source, you really have to consider a project
popularity. Project that are too centralized, that do not rely on other
popular project are doomed to get in your way!

Catalyst relies on CPAN modules, this alone, assure me it is a better option
than RoR, because a lot more people are working on the different pieces
idependently, the work is better distributed, DBD::JDBC is usefull for a lot
more project, not only Catalyst, this suggest it will better survive and
evolve, RoR is full stack, so do evolve it will add a lot more work for its
developer, and its open source, so no guaranty you will find one to do the
work!

GG situation is even better than catalyst, it relies on an even more popular
and solid foundation.

New Open Source Poject should always trie to introduce the least amount of new
code!

I do believe that the future for Ruby, Tcl, Python and Perl should be on
either Parrot or the JVM this will make it easier for new project to rely on
other people's work, will improve portability etc ...

I will not drop Perl/Catalyst from my knowledge efforts, I very strongly
believe in the Perl community, and that the current problems will be solved in
ways that will even push Perl beyond Java

Hope i was clear

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jrockway
> hey, you are that dude who wrote the catalyst book

yup :)

Anyway, I agree that Perl on Windows is painful. Most of the developers use
UNIX variants, so naturally support on the UNIX side is going to be better.
Basically, I think it's best to take the path of least resistance. If using
Windows is important to you, you'll have fewer problems if you use the
Microsoft stack. If Perl is important to you, you should just use UNIX. It's a
shame that we have to make compromises like this, but sometimes you just need
to get your work done :)

But anyway, I've used DBD::Sybase with modern versions of SQL Server. It
worked fine to get a UNIX application to talk to a remote SQL Server instance
and call stored procedures. DBIx::Class also works.

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systems
I never really understood the importance of portability until I got this job

I work in the business applications group in the IT department in a non-it
multinational company

I don't have a say, or least not much of it, on waht OS or DB engine, we can
use, there is a different IT infrastructure team that deals with this, and
honesly this is a relief, I dont have to worry about backups and stuff like
this.

I try to be a an open source proponent, and try to introduce or slip in OOS
application. But if that application won't work on windows, SqlServer and IIS.
I will never be able to make the case for it and push it.

Maybe after I successfully introduce few OOS business apps and Dev framework,
I can start to make a call for a linux server, but not before.

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musiciangames
Qwaq, which recently raised $7M, is also Squeak/Smalltalk/Croquet:

<http://qwaq.com/company/press_releases/pr-2007_11_27.php>

Qwaq has put a lot of its developments back into Croquet. A few more ventures
using Squeak could cause the (already high) productivity of the environment to
take off.

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giles_bowkett
I can't find it in Gmail, but IIRC one of the Auctomatic guys told me they
were on Seaside, and they didn't understand why the whole world wasn't on
Seaside too.

I would be working in Seaside if I had more time, but there's the huge Rails
job market, the fact that I've been working with Rails a bunch, and the
fundamental fish-out-of-water feeling of being without my Unix security
blanket. I'm going to the OSCON tutorial on Seaside soon, though, and Steven
Baker told me he has a cool Seaside app to show off at RailsConf.

In addition to programming I devote serious amounts of time to acting and
music. If programming were my only thing, I would be working in Seaside. I
really enjoy Ruby immensely, but Seaside's very impressive. It even makes
everything else look a little silly.

