Mark Volkmann wrote:
> 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.

No it is not, most people will ask, "where are my {};".

>> 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.  

<aside>For me, thats Perl</aside>

> 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. 

Honestly, thats Perl for me, too, hence scripting.

>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.

I agree with you there, it is not really difficult. The headless issue 
however, might just be a minor Squeak problem, thats not really a 
Smalltalk issue.

What I use(d) Smalltalk for, was mostly GUI stuff (though I use SWT for 
that nowadays, at work at least) and applications having a large domain 
model behind. That is what you can use a high level language like 
Smalltalk for, in my opinion that is what it was meant for. I have done 
my fair share of "Scripting" in Smalltalk, and it is a pain when 
compared to the close integration of Perl with the OS APIs (especially 
on Unix).

What is holding Smalltalk back then (train of thought order only)?

- In my opinion, in part, licensing models
- the crud which is called VB which is used to implement actual applications
- the absence of a standard Smalltalk with a standard class hierarchy
- Java and C# due to their huge amount of both useful and useless frameworks
- Almost no one teaches Smalltalk (I was among the last of my university 
who learned Smalltalk)


Just my two cents.