
Smalltalk is stable and growing - chanux
http://joachimtuchel.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/va-smalltalk-is-stable-and-growing/
======
geekles
I really dig smalltalk, especially the Pharo project, which I believe is a
fork of Squeak.

The development environment is a joy to use, although unfamiliar to the
uninitiated, but very powerful indeed. Some people do not like the image idea
or the fact that they can't bring their tools with them, but I love it. Pharo
lives on my USB stick and is ready and willing no matter what type of system I
am on, or whose for that matter.

~~~
devonrt
It's funny because I had a really refreshing experience with Pharo lately. A
part of the workspace threw an exception and I was presented with the option
to debug it. Hitting debug brings up a debugger with the full stack available
and the source of the error. Within a few minutes I was able to track down the
error, fix it and have the fix go live immediately. Compare this to what it
would take to debug and fix an error in, say, Eclipse. The difficulty of
checking out the Eclipse source, dealing with potentially confusing and
convoluted source code, wrangling with a labyrinthine ant or Maven build
process etc. makes it not worth your while to fix the problem.

Whatever the pros and cons of the image based system may be the immediacy and
transparency of it is really enjoyable. It's a shame that the idea has been
pretty much abandoned by all but a small contingent of developers.

~~~
xtho
> A part of the workspace threw an exception

Did this happen with the standard workspace as it was distributed? This
typical smalltalk experience might be acceptable you. There is a chance though
that your customers won't find it similarly enjoyable.

~~~
devonrt
For one, this was Pharo Smalltalk; a fork of Squeak that's still in beta. For
another if I was shipping an application to a customer I probably wouldn't
ship it with the workspace, or any of the development tools really. I would
also consider buying a license for a commercial Smalltalk if that was the
case.

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paulgb
I picked up Seaside and Magritte recently to build a demo. Seaside is a
refreshing change from the Rails/Django/Pylons style frameworks. I found the
abstractions Seaside provides (continuations and components) to be much more
powerful than what the other frameworks gave me.

The downside is that it's a drastically different development process than I'm
used to. Squeak and Pharo take a lot of effort to get used to.

~~~
vorador
Did you try GNU Smalltalk (<http://smalltalk.gnu.org/>)? It's a command-line
smalltalk that interfaces well with unix. I find it simpler to grasp than
seaside because there are less things to understand at the same time.

~~~
rufugee
Don't you mean "simpler to grasp than Squeak"? I doubt Seaside and GNU
Smalltalk have much in common...one being a framework and the other a
smalltalk environment.

What I'd be more curious about is whether GNU Smalltalk can run Seaside...

~~~
avibryant
It can, as of the recent releases.

~~~
paulgb
Avi, do you use Pharo as your main development environment?

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mdg
So Smalltalk is not dying because someone who sells Smalltalk IDE says so?

\- Wait -

I am not trying to be anti-Smalltalk, but that seems analogous to Spolsky, who
sells bug tracking software, downplaying TDD.

\- Wait -

I am not trying to be anti-Spolsky, but that seems analogous to person X, who
sells product Y, downplaying Z, in order to persuade people one way or
another.

...So this must of been what my professor was talking about when she said it
is important to take into account who is providing you with this information

~~~
jhancock
The reference to increased sales is true for both VA Smalltalk and Gemstone.
Also noted: this growth is consistent in prior years. Those are not opinions
without regard to the fact that they did not release sales numbers. I know and
have worked for the CEOs of both companies (long ago); they are very honest
businessmen. If they claim the growth is real, I do believe them.

