On Nov 20, 2008, at 5:28 PM, David Mitchell wrote:

> Most of the things that make Smalltalk great (what makes Smalltalk
> Smalltalk) are the things that hold it back for a lot of people.

Maybe I'm naive on this, but it seems like it should be easy convince  
lots of people that Smalltalk has a beautiful syntax and a wonderful  
development environment.

> If you want a more Unixy, scripty, Smalltalkish thing with syntax
> blended C and Perl that you can hack with a text editor, try Ruby.

I think this depends on how we define "scripty". I take that to mean  
quick, short, one off programs. I personally use Ruby for that today.  
However, I'd like to be able to use Squeak when things get a little  
bigger. For example, suppose I want to run an application every night  
that queries a database, produces some text report and emails it to  
several people. I don't see any reason why those kinds of applications  
should be difficult to write and deploy using Squeak, but they seem  
pretty difficult to me today because I can't get the headless stuff to  
work.

> If you want objects all the time with a crazy amount of integration in
> the tools and little attempt at conforming to outside ideas, Smalltalk
> is your game.
>
> On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 5:02 PM, Mark Volkmann <mark at ociweb.com>  
> wrote:
>> I don't have a lot of experience with Smalltalk yet, but I really  
>> love what
>> I've seen so far.
>>
>> I'm curious what experienced Smalltalkers see as some of the  
>> reasons why it
>> doesn't attract more attention. I understand the issues with  
>> Smalltalk in
>> the past related to license costs and performance, but those have  
>> been
>> addressed now. Have you tried to convince someone to consider  
>> Smalltalk and
>> failed to convince them? Why do you think they rejected it? What
>> improvements could be made to current Smalltalk environments,  
>> especially
>> Squeak, that might sway them?
>>
>> For me the biggest issue has been trying to run my code from  
>> outside Squeak.
>> This includes running Squeak headless to do something script-like and
>> configuring a GUI application to run in a way that doesn't require  
>> the user
>> to know they are running Squeak. Both of these are supposedly  
>> possible, but
>> very difficult to get right.
>>
>> ---
>> Mark Volkmann
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>


---
Mark Volkmann