I'm a little late on this thread but being an old Smalltalker I do have some insight into the problems that lead to it's falling out of grace. I think there were many. First the old VM technology was much slower than stuff written in C/C++. Secondly the language it's self is bizzare if you consider where the vast majority of programmers come from. I know that shops didn't particularly care for the problems that came with C++. However moving to something as foreign as Smalltalk just wasn't an option. Developer seats were expensive and once you picked an implementation you were locked in. When Java came along it was a natural bridge between C++ and Smalltalk. C/C++ people could still code the way they were used to coding. Development shops were also nervous about Smalltalk coming from a few very small companies. ParcPlace was vulnerable and that eventually did it in.. just about the time that Java adoption was starting to take off. So although one might blame Java for Smalltalks fall, I think it was coming anyways. Sure IBM jumping in on the bandwagon gave it some legitimacy however....
I worked for GemStone for a number of years. IMHO GemStone failed in the EJB market (even though they had many years of application server experience in Smalltalk and some time in Java) primarly because they couldn't make the cultural sift from Smalltalk to Java. WebLogic kicked "our" asses not because they were better, they weren't. They did so because management failed to recognized that they needed to loosen the reigns and let people have access in the same what that others were starting to do at the time. Again, this is an over simplification. Regards, Kirk Hamlet D'Arcy wrote: > A guy named James Foster just presented last week at a group I belong > to. His talk called "The Seaside Heresy" was video recorded and posted > (it's a bit long): http://programminggems.wordpress.com/2008/09/22/video/ > > He's from Gemstone, but the talk is about Smalltalk and Seaside (the > web framework). It's very cool to see the edit-and-continue > capabilities of Smalltalk played out in a web framework. When testing > your webapp from the browser, an exception puts you in a debugger, at > which point you can edit the code (not just variable values!), pop the > stack frame and continue rendering in the browser where you left off. > Very cool. > > This is an interesting post about Smalltalk too, called What's Good > about Smalltalk: > http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/userblogs/knight/blogView?showComments=true&entry=3254944787 > > > On Sep 29, 6:01 am, "Mark Volkmann" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 10:24 PM, Mark Derricutt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >>> You can just run squeak in headless mode by added the -headless command line >>> parameter. >>> >> I've tried that, but haven't been able to get it to work. Can you >> email me an example command along with the content of an example .st >> file you pass to the command that works for you? You can send it to me >> off list at r.mark.volkmann at gmail dot com. >> >> Thanks! >> >> >>> If you want to connect to this server with a GUI, you can >>> install the RFB package (Remote Frame Buffer - >>> http://map.squeak.org/package/d4f692a8-c7fa-4d49-927f-74aba7e8fd83) >>> >>> On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 4:08 PM, Mark Volkmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >>> wrote: >>> >>>> The biggest issue seems to be finding an easy way to run a Smalltalk >>>> application from outside the Squeak environment. It seems that the >>>> proponents of it feel it is acceptable to have users run applications >>>> >> -- >> R. Mark Volkmann >> Object Computing, Inc. >> > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
