Smalltalk: Requiem or Resurgence? {Dr. Dobb's Journal (05/06/06) Chan, Jeremy}

Laurence Rozier laurence.rozier at gmail.com
Wed May 10 20:38:22 UTC 2006


Thanks. The presentation mentioned in the article is at:

http://www.heeg.de/downloads/vortraege/Vortrag_Toronto_2006/Vortrag_Toronto2006_GeorgHeeg.pdf

On 5/10/06, Klaus D. Witzel <klaus.witzel at cobss.com> wrote:
>
> Quote:
> Jonah Group principal consultant Jeremy Chan cannot verify a resurgence in
> the use of the Smalltalk object-oriented language as indicated by Georg
> Heeg at the recent Smalltalk Solutions Conference, noting that none of his
> company's customer requests exhibit a desire for Smalltalk. Chan writes
> that Smalltalk's status as a OO language does not really provide an
> explanation of why it might be superior to other OO languages, and why,
> given such alleged superiority, it has been displaced by the likes of Java
> and C# as the most preferred language for enterprises in the last decade.
> "This is the essence of the Smalltalk Paradox," Chan says. The author
> reasons that developers may have difficulty relating Smalltalk's
> programming concepts, presented by defining the language's five principal
> vocabulary terms (object, message, class, instance, and method), to
> something else they already know. The vocabulary defines four rules of the
> language: All things are objects; all objects represent instances of some
> class; objects perform tasks by sending messages; and messages are
> deployed via methods. Chan attributes Smalltalk's lack of popularity to
> several factors, including the defensive posture Smalltalk developers
> assume when the language's superiority is questioned, and the absence of a
> major industry backer with the marketing muscle to facilitate Smalltalk's
> mainstream penetration. The author believes the Smalltalk community would
> receive a significant boost by attracting outsiders and discussing
> collaboration.
> Unquote.
>
> - http://www.ddj.com/dept/architect/187200914
>
> /Klaus
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/attachments/20060510/102d7383/attachment.htm


More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list