[Newbies] [semi-OT] (fwd) Re: What Killed Smalltalk?

[Lawson English]

Conrad Taylor wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 5:19 PM, Lawson English <lenglish5 at cox.net 
> <mailto:lenglish5 at cox.net>> wrote:
>
>     Steve Wessels wrote:
>
>         That's right.  Smalltalk hasn't died.  I am fortunate enough
>         to be part of a team developing financial software for many
>         years using Smalltalk.
>
>         People have predicted Smalltalk's death about as often as
>         Apple's death.
>
>         I think comparisons between Smalltalk and Java have to take
>         marketing into account.
>
>         Paying Smalltalk work is harder to find.  Here's an
>         interesting twist.  Companies looking for skilled Object
>         Oriented developers, if they understand what they need, will
>         seek programmers with Smalltalk experience.
>
>          
>
>
>     Speaking as a long-term script kiddie who likes to collect
>     languages, I can tell you that the main reason(s) why *I* find
>     Smalltalk difficult to use involve(s): lack of documentation, lack
>     of well-documented example code, lack of compsci teaching
>     materials written with Smalltalk for the example code, etc. Notice
>     a trend?
>
>
> When I first encountered Smalltalk, it was through the course material 
> for CS 497 and Ralph Johnson was the instructor.  It was an 
> intermediate undergraduate and graduate course on object oriented 
> programming (OOP).  Thus, it wasn't a course for the entry level 
> computer science student but it should have been because I learned 
> more in this course than any of my other computer science courses. 
>  The course used the following textbooks:
>
> Design Patterns by Ralph Johnson et al
> Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns by Kent Beck
> Design Patterns:  The Smalltalk Companion by Alpert et al (optional 
> but well worth it)

I tried to find that course. The video links still exist, but the videos 
themselves seem to be offline.

Darn.


Lawson