On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 2:18 PM, Esteban A. Maringolo
<emaringolo at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2014-09-16 14:37 GMT-03:00 Sebastian Sastre <sebastian at flowingconcept.com>:
>
>> Well, a while ago in the business list I’ve raised the idea that making
>> Pharo able to do native OS windows would help it to gain market space (as in
>> the opposite of staying at the margins of it).
>>
>> So, I’d be very positively curious about being able to use Pharo to do
>> multiplatform native apps
>
> The trend is shifting to mobile devices, iOS and Android are eating
> the whole market. So if it is about the potential market size, native
> mobile (tablets/phones/TVs) should come as the first option, before
> desktop.

+1.  Desktop apps are "dead" aren't they?  I'm doubtful that native
windows would help Smalltalk's popularity, as evidenced, I guess, by
the fact VA and VW have supported them for a long time; did they take
over the world yet?

> For development, native windows could prove very useful.

How so?  For me, one of the worst aspects of trying to develop in
VisualAge or VisualWorks *is* the multiple host windows.  It makes it
virtually impossible to work in more than one image, and reinforces
the "grand cathedral" thinking about Smalltalk; e.g. you're not
supposed to want or need anything outside your one, true, image.
Dinosaur!

I constantly work in multiple images, not only for separate projects
but for the ability to quickly and easily fork images for multicore
processing on the same project.  Other times simply to try something
temporary and possibly dangerous.  The memory isolation is critical
for productivity, the UI isolation for usability, and the multi-core
capability for performance.

I think we should focus on how to move to more and smaller
intercommunicating images rather than one big image.  I understand its
appeal for _deploying_ an off-the-shelf desktop app, but I'm not aware
of any other use-cases where multiple host windows would be preferable
to one host window per image.