----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen Pair" <spair at advantive.com>
To: <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 09, 2002 11:39 AM
Subject: RE: Killer Application (was: Squeak Foundation)


> (also, it is not by intention to belittle any of the great work being
> done in Squeak by using the term "real world applications"...with that
> term, I simply mean applications targeted at users among the majority of
> people using computers in the world today)

We could use "applications-that-would-get-done-in-VB" instead.

Or RealBasic, or GnomeBasic...

That covers about 99% of all desktops in the world

I use to say (half jokingly) that the decisive factor in the acceptance of
Windows (back in the early nineties) in large businesses was Visual Basic.
It was Visual Basic, with its ease of use (ease of messing code up real bad
too, but that's not the case) and ease of development that helped make the
jump to Windows for thousands of businesses. It was because of that push
that zillions of 286s and Clipper applications were substituted by 386s and
custom-built Windows programs.

Of course, commercial versions of Smalltalk (I had used Actor myself back
then) were there already, but they didn't make the same splash. Why that
happened is subject to heated discussion ;-)