Thursday, October 16, 2008

Remember Smalltalk?

I was an IBM support specialist for VisualAge for Smalltalk in the 90's. Seeing these blogs brought tears of bitter memories to me since I'm now a Java head .... To quote: http://blogs.gartner.com/mark_driver/2008/10/09/remember-smalltalk/
Here a simply equation. In terms of mental fortitude…
1 Smalltalk developer = 2.5 C++ developers
1 C++ Developer = 1.5 Java developers
in other words…
Smalltalk is a meal with a fine Bordeaux and a petite filet mignon
Java is a meal with a cold beer and t-bone
So Yeah.. I said it.
Smalltalk is making a comeback. (pausing to wait for reader to regain consciousness)
...
Its somewhat funny to consider that a new generation of developers (post C++) consider the features in Ruby to be bleeding edge when in fact they are mostly retro features of things that Smalltalk has done for decades. The challenge of course is that languages like Python and Ruby have the heat needed to create a strong momentum. Smalltalk enjoys the benefit of association but not enough to transfer that heat in large volume — at least not yet.

Dave Thomas (OTI head) wrote a oldish article in Celebrating 25 Years of Smalltalk about the impact of Smalltalk (don't I remember Footprint and ENVYand the horrors of Visual Banker!)

or an alternative view: What would you miss if you had to stop using ruby and go back to smalltalk?. Yeah I remember that hassle with Operator precedence and the pain it caused.

Finally, a web framework for smalltalk!! http://www.seaside.st/ or Aida http://ww.aidaweb.si/

so... what about Scala? (wikipedia entry)

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