
Smalltalk: An Entrepreneur's Secret Weapon - louiscyphre
https://medium.com/@richardeng/smalltalk-an-entrepreneurs-secret-weapon-a36b01b68b29
======
theamk
I think of the big problems with Smalltalk is how bad the marketing is. There
are few posts which get brought up over and over, and they claim the things
that are clearly false ("It can be learned in its entirety within 15
minutes!") or misleading (the one productivity study which is by now decades
old.. the claim that it has "simple syntax").

I'd like to encourage Smalltalk advocates to write more "from the trenches"
posts. A Haskell is a great comparison: it looks like every few weeks there is
a post on using Haskell in production, like [0].. Those posts work much than
abstract claims of "tremendous benefits" and "magical language".

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22308771](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22308771)

~~~
xkriva11
Sorry, all these articles are from a single person with the messianic syndrome
who named himself "Mr Smalltalk". He absolutely rejects any complaints about
his activities (he repeatedly told us that we do not understand marketing) and
he will never be able to write something more solid because he actually is not
a Smalltalk programmer and does not know it well. He is making a really bad
service.

~~~
louiscyphre
If I'm not mistaken, he created the following blog:
[https://smalltalk.tech.blog/](https://smalltalk.tech.blog/).

It contains "solid" articles from Leandro Caniglia and Lorenzo Schiavina.

It also contains an article about his recent programming competition
(currently under way): [https://smalltalk.tech.blog/2020/02/08/the-results-
are-in/](https://smalltalk.tech.blog/2020/02/08/the-results-are-in/).

This is one heck of a competition, and it's a great promotion for Pharo!

~~~
xkriva11
It is not normal to talk about yourself in third person.

------
Psyladine
> #($a #a 'a' 1 1.0)

A syntax so easy, you can teach your grandma in 15 minutes.

~~~
louiscyphre
Indeed, you can. The first thing to learn here is that the hash (#) signifies
a literal symbol. So, #a is a symbol, whereas 'a' is a string (of length 1 and
containing the character $a).

The second thing to learn is that the dollar sign ($) signifies a character
value, so $b is the value of the character "b" and $c is the value of the
character "c".

#() signifies a literal array created at compile time.

Thus, #($a #a 'a' 1 1.0) is an array that contains the character $a, the
symbol #a, the string 'a', the integer 1, and the floating value 1.0). Easy
peasy.

~~~
theamk
Separate types for literals, characters and strings? That's already more
complex than Python, not to mention TCL.

------
pinkfoot
When you add the Gemstone/S transparent object database to the mix is is truly
astonishing.

