Hi Stef I was not really comparing on a language level Smalltalk and Cobol, but more about systems in general. Those legacy systems are around for many years: people have learned the hard way about compatibility, reliability etc. on the other hand, legacy is often a chaotic [some words removed] mess.. I have worked on programs modified over a period of 20 years by 10 or more programmers.. This is also no fun, on the contrary, often a nightmare.
I did those ancient languages (Cobol Fortran, and more) for many years and still will do with these procedural languages, because I have to make a living. But don't worry: to me, it sometimes gives the same fun as e.g. a technician who likes working on old steam locomotives in a railway museum :o) The whole environment is however painstakingly difficult (not the language) and needs discipline. I could give you a sightseeing on a mainframe site, but it would make you weep :o) btw. May I introduce myself? look at my CV at : http://tedvg.seasidehosting.st/seaside/TGCVSite (very beta, my first Smalltalk/Seaside app. my picture is a bit formal even wearing a tie:o) I tried in the last 15 years or so to get work with more modern OOP systems e.g. Smalltalk, Java C#. even Delphi. mostly I dindn't succeed. I studied all of this intensively in my free time. I would (if I could) rather have written all these past software in Smalltalk.. Would have saved me a lot of headaches But back then systems were too slow, it was all "too academic" and Smalltalk had just being invented. In those years me, and many others too, had almost no notion of what object technology really is.. Now, today, I see my long existing dreams actually getting fulfilled! I can use Smalltalk because now it works and is fast enough too. I like it very much and hope to get work with it if get more proficient with it. Pharo looks good, is stable and a please to work with. I really hope Pharo / Smalltalk establishes itself, because it is clean, pure, fun and I can concentrate on fast application building instead of many nitty gritty language details. I am still a rookie on Smalltalk steroids, will contribute if I get better with it. Thanks all for all the work. Perhaps it is comforting to know that even people like me, coming from totally different IT fields believe in Smalltalk, maybe it is exactly because we can compare to what we already know. Ted Jikes! too much text. Too much time. I need to get a job soon. On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 7:42 PM, Stéphane Ducasse <[email protected]> wrote: > Mike and other > > How many engineers are payed to deliver freeBSD? > How many active committers and packages responsible are actively commiting > and taking > responsibility for packages? > > We need also stability but right now not changing is just been dead. > I think that lot of people do not read the code of pharo else they would see > why we are > changing. We do not change for the fun. THIS IS NOT FUN TO write boring code > to fix ugly situation. We would prefer to write hyper cool sexy app and be > fancy to > impress girls but this is not like that. Network is bad, compiler is bad, > file is ugly.... > Once this will be fixed then we will not change for the sake of it. > > Now comparing Smalltalk to cobol is silly (sorry but it is). Right we are > fighting > with python, ruby, javascript (in fact we are not fighting since we do not > even exist in the radar). > If we want to get a chance, we should move way faster and be really > aggressive to make sure > that you can write hyper cool application. > > Now why would you need to upgrade all the time to new versions if your system > is working. > > Metacello and versioning systems are your friends: maintain difference streams > and versions if you want to share between different versions. > > Stef >
