Something like this happened to my project teams twice. (Though it was
first C++ and later Microsoft VB ASP as the competing project teams.)
The *much* larger development organizations delivered less
functionality (according to the companies own metrics), but their
managers were far more powerful because they had a larger span of
control.

On 8/12/07, Todd Blanchard <tblanchard at mac.com> wrote:
> Shows a total ignorance of how management thinks.
>
> Java is about 1/10 to 1/5 as productive as Smalltalk.
>
>  From the manger's perspective, he wants to climb the corporate
> ladder.  To do this, he must become more important than he is.  He
> could hire Steve the wizard Smalltalker to write his system and get
> it done in a few months.  Steve can do it.  He's pricey but from a
> productivity perspective, he's worth it.
>
> But when promotion time comes - manager guy can only say "I have one
> employee - Steve" and he gets very little respect as a manager.  How
> hard can it be to manage one guy?
>
> For the timeframe - he could hire 5 Java guys - make more code (that
> does the same thing) and he gets to say to his peers that he manages
> a team of 5 developers.  Each developer costs less than Steve - so it
> looks like he is getting a bargain in two ways.  Which sounds better
> to his boss who is judging him on his management skills?  He manages
> Steve.  Or he manages a team of 5?  Which one will get him promoted?
>
> Extra bonus reason - Steve can get hit by a bus.  Big risk!  A Java
> developer can also get hit by a bus - but if that happens it is much
> less likely to impact the project critically.  So manager guy feels
> better about that too.  Steve is hard to replace - Java people are a
> dime a dozen and only have to be 1/5 as good.
>
> Smalltalk loses because it is TOO productive.  It frightens the
> manager and doesn't make him look powerful and important.  It
> marginalizes him instead.
>
> FWIW, I also worked as a dev manager at some large companies and
> believe me - this is the thought process.
>
>
> On Aug 12, 2007, at 1:36 PM, Janko Mivšek wrote:
>
> > Another one from blogosfere. For our rethinking ...
> >
> > http://pinderkent.blogsavy.com/archives/99
> >
> > A lack of productivity is killing Smalltalk.
> >
> > I heard today that the development of Dolphin Smalltalk has been
> > discontinued. Although it isn't a product I used or was familiar
> > with, I have been involved with a number of Smalltalk-based
> > development efforts in the past. While it was somewhat popular in
> > the late 1980s and early 1990s, the commercial usage of Smalltalk
> > has declined significantly since then.
> >
> > Slava Pestov suggests how poor implementations are leading to the
> > downfall of Smalltalk. I would tend to agree, to some extent. Most
> > Smalltalk implementations really don't compare to a development
> > platform like Java, or even what Microsoft has put together with C#
> > and .NET.
> >
> > However, I would tend to think that the main reason why Smalltalk
> > has started to really fall out of favor is that it doesn't bring
> > the level of productivity that it used to, relative to other
> > technologies. Back in the early 1990s, a lot of enterprise-grade
> > software was written using C or C++. For developing complex
> > business applications, Smalltalk often did offer a very significant
> > productivity boost to developers, even if the runtime performance
> > of the applications suffered somewhat. Being at a higher-level, it
> > allowed business rules and concepts to be more easily and
> > effectively represented in the software itself.
> >
> > But that started to change by the mid-1990s. Java arose, and
> > offered many of the benefits that Smalltalk had been offering.
> > That's not to say that Java, as a language, is comparable to
> > Smalltalk. In many ways it's quite inferior, even over a decade
> > after its initial release. But it was more familiar to those
> > developers who'd come from the world of C and C++, while also
> > offering OO functionality and garbage collection similar enough to
> > that of Smalltalk.
> >
> > I've worked with several excellent Smalltalk developers in the
> > past. A talented, experienced professional can do wonders with
> > Smalltalk. Unfortunately for them, Java and its vast array of
> > classes, class libraries and frameworks have brought a similar
> > level of productivity to only average developers. So if these
> > average developers can churn out an adequate software product at a
> > lower cost than the Smalltalk expert, as has often become the case,
> > then the business will flow towards the Java developers.
> >
> > Unless the Smalltalk developers bring something to the party that
> > drastically increases their productivity (or their software's
> > productivity) over that put out by Java developers, they won't have
> > a real chance at survival.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Janko Mivšek
> > AIDA/Web
> > Smalltalk Web Application Server
> > http://www.aidaweb.si
> >
>
>
>