[Newbies] Re: Why hasn't Smalltalk been wildly accepted?

Klaus D. Witzel klaus.witzel at cobss.com
Wed Aug 9 05:45:56 UTC 2006


On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 07:17:58 +0200, Todd Blanchard wrote:

> Because the primary vendor for Smalltak - ParcPlace Systems, pursued a  
> strategy of maximizing profit per user instead of profit overall.  In  
> its heyday, VisualWorks cost something like $3000 per user and so almost  
> nobody could afford to learn it unless they could do it on the job at  
> their employer's expense.   Even the academic license was something like  
> $500 - pretty steep for a student.
>
...
> Java gained ground because anyone who wanted to try it could just  
> download it and learn it.  This wasn't possible with Smalltalk - so  
> nobody learned it.

See, it was necessary to attach a very large price tag to Smalltalk for  
getting an idea of Java's value (value := price tag in this case ;-)  
Seriously, I believe this cause-and-effect.

> At least, this is how things looked to me as an enterprise systems  
> architect in the mid-1990's.

I agree, same experience here. But the story about VAST and COBOL was:  
sales rep #1 "what's this small talk thingy good for?"; sales rep #2  
"replacing COBOL?!". The COBOL landscape was, by that time, the largest  
and replacing any COBOL system by anything else meant more $$$ for the  
sales rep than she/he could imagine to earn by selling something else.

/Klaus



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