I generalized the problem (because is not a problem exclusive to our community) so here I wrote a couple of thoughts on the subject: Money and Popularity are Distractions [1]
about abstractions: is hard for most because education is broken. People is indoctrinated to obey and shut up instead of creating new better systems (that require Systemic Thinking, which will make natural use of abstraction among many other skills). Education is being revolutionized worldwide as we speak so I say we shouldn't worry about it, Smalltalk is brain-ergonomic-computing, all we have to do is to keep supporting that revolution with our great tool made even better (Hint: usability glitches). about big businesses: Cows eat grass, flies eat ... and most people is only smart enough to be impressed by big quantities of money. So yes, if we have enough huge cases of startups being bought by google (or whatever exit strategy that makes investors rich) our popularity will grow. But, as I mention in that post, it's only a distraction. A good one once it happens, there is no question about it, but let things flow. We are not there yet. Don't let the charming money game distract you. Unless you are right now in the subgroup of the 1% that's a VC or an angel or a superangel, you are not one of those players. If you are, that's great, help smalltalkers to improve their entrepreneurial skills (they could be great tech co-founders). So.. Usability and reliability are the areas we need to be serious about. Usability of what? Usability of a tool that provides a smooth experience to be a startup hero. Trust this: people will be infinitely hungry of such a tool. So let's meditate on the bumps we are providing now to people trying to "startupize" some problems with Pharo. cheers sebastian o/ PS: also let's think about the iOS market. If any professional has a paying client asking for an iPad application he/she can't currently do it with Pharo. There is a big money market right there (in the middle of a lagging economy) and we are not doing enough about it? how smart is that? PSS: when I talk on startups I mean democratized solutions. Don't think only on startups that got invested. Bootstrappers also counts (actually, they have even more moral credit). [1] http://sebastianconcept.com/brandIt/money-and-popularity-are-distractions On Mar 9, 2012, at 1:11 PM, Torsten Bergmann wrote: > Hi Stefan, > > I'm not sure if it is a killer app that is required to get more > visibility for Pharo or a better adoption of Smalltalk. > > We already have nice open-source apps ranging from Seaside, Pier, > Moose, Swiki, ... up to other Smalltalk apps that are sucessfull > also in business life. > > Look at JPMorgans Kapital project done in VW, other big Smalltalk > projects or the Pharo success stories [2] meanwhile known to the world. > Still Smalltalk is very unknown among developers ... > > I agree with Dave Thomas who said that the object abstraction is too > complex for the majority of programmers. [1] > Most people are happy with (boring) CRUD applications and > I doubt a killer app implemented in Smalltalk will change this. > Most of them see no need for switching from Java, C#, ... > > Not that I would not want to see Trac/Bugzilla/... one-click replacements > done in Smalltalk - but building them will eat up our resources to build > something that should be even better than current Smalltalks. > > I doubt that Pharo will become the "next big thing". I'm not > sad about that since most hype technologies will easily fade away > when the next hype comes up. > > Maybe you remember auctomatic.com - these guys have built an app > with Seaside and sold the company for lots of money. So it must > have been a killer app. > > One of them (Patrick) shares some nice thoughts on his > page [3] - if you replace "auctomatic" with Pharo and "ebay" > with one of the mainstream technologies like Java it is an > interesting guide for a future of Pharo too. > Especially regarding internationalization which is I think > an interesting area to get more people into Smalltalk. > > Bye > Torsten > > > [1] http://smalltalk-bob.blogspot.com/2012/03/who-needs-objects.html > [2] http://www.pharo-project.org/about/success-stories > [3] http://patrickcollison.com/blog/2009/10/surprises > > -- > Empfehlen Sie GMX DSL Ihren Freunden und Bekannten und wir > belohnen Sie mit bis zu 50,- Euro! https://freundschaftswerbung.gmx.de >
