October 2017 - Pharo-users - lists.pharo.org

Re: [Pharo-users] Smalltalk Argument

by phil＠highoctane.be

Sure. Current main issue is to have Pharo work with Kerberos as secured Hadoop uses the UGI (UserGroupInformation) thing and that is a black hole of crypto things. How would you see ParrotTalk work? I made a XmppTalk thing (binding for libstrophe) for having Pharo images and other stuff talk together (currently using OpenFire/Gajim/Profanity) FWIW See https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1HTG3GB3xdwlje8wADZPjUQNIyA6tmuxyZz1… libstrophe does the SSL thing under the hood (using OpenSSL) and is actively maintained. https://github.com/strophe/libstrophe/blob/master/src/tls_openssl.c And I currently work with Kafka so, Pharo as a consumer or producer, sure am interested. But need Kerberos support. Tell me more about your vision. Even better, draw it in some way :-) Phil On Thu, Oct 26, 2017 at 8:43 AM, henry <henry(a)callistohouse.club> wrote: > This is a goal of ParrotTalk, to bring bit-compatible communications to > Squeak, Pharo and Java. This is not an invocation bridge you speak of but a > communications bridge to be able to run against Hadoop or whichever big > data needs integration with (Kafka). I had hoped it might be adopted for > such. Yet again this is not exactly what you were looking for but yet > interesting perhaps? > > > - HH > > > On Thu, Oct 26, 2017 at 02:17, phil(a)highoctane.be <phil(a)highoctane.be> > wrote: > > I like that piece a lot, seeing exactly the described situation in large > enterprises. > > I made a strategic decision to go with Pharo for the long run for my > solutions because it is a stable base on which to build (ok, there are > evolutions, but fundamentally, I can rely on it being under control and can > maintain solutions in a version). > > The rationale is that at a deep level I am really fed up with having to > deal with accidental complexity (now having to deal with > Spark/Scala/sbt/Java/maven stuff) that makes the dev focus 80% technology > drag and 20% net business contribution. > > One key thing is that a team needs guidance and Smalltalk makes it easier > due to well known ways of doing things. > > Now we miss the boat on mobile and bigdata, but this is solvable. > > If we had an open Java bridge (and some people in the community have it > for Pharo but do not open source it - so this is eminently doable) + Pharo > as an embeddable piece (e.g. like Tcl and Lua) and not a big executable we > would have a way to embed Pharo in a lot of places (e.g. in the Hadoop > ecosystem where fast starting VMs and small footprint would make the > cluster capacity x2 or x3 vs uberjars all over the place) this would be a > real disruption. > > Think about being able to call Pharo from JNA https://github.com/java- > native-access/jna the same way we use C with UFFI. > > Smalltalk argument for me is that it makes development bearable (even fun > and enjoyable would I say) vs the other stacks. That matters. > > Phil > > > > > > > > > On Thu, Oct 26, 2017 at 12:46 AM, Andrew Glynn <aglynn42(a)gmail.com> > wrote: > > Thereâs other questions that are relevant to me: > > > > Do I give a f*** about cool looking web apps? No, I donât use web apps if > in any way I can avoid it. > > > > Do I give a f*** about mobile apps? No, the screenâs too small to read > anything longer than a twit, or anyone with anything worthwhile to say. > > > > Do I give a f*** about the number of libraries in other languages? No, > because most of them are crap in every language Iâve had to work in, and > the base languages are crap so they have to keep changing radically, and > libraries and frameworks therefore also have to and never get any better. > The few that are worthwhile I can almost always use from Smalltalk without > a problem (read, Blender, ACT-R and Synapse, since every other > library/framework Iâve used outside Smalltalk has been a waste of time). > > > > Do I give a f*** about implementing a complex piece of machine learning > software in 22 hours, compared to 3 months for the Java version? Well, > actually yes, I do, because that was 3 months of my life down the toilet > for something that is too slow to be useful in Java. > > > > Any argument depends on your priorities. Iâve written tons of web apps, > because I needed to get paid. Iâve written better shitty mobile apps than > the average shitty mobile apps. However, Iâm not going to do any of that > any longer in crap that never improves, because after 26 years the > irritability it produces is more than itâs worth. > > > > A few weeks ago, a recruiter that specializes in Smalltalk called me about > a job, although they were well aware I live 1500 miles away from the city I > lived in when I had worked through them, to see if Iâd be willing to move > back there for a job. That sounds like another âthere arenât enough > Smalltalk developers", but it wasnât, because the job wasnât writing > Smalltalk. It was writing Java. > > > > The person hiring, though, wouldnât look at anyone who didnât write > Smalltalk, because "people who grew up with Java donât know how to write > code". I donât agree with that, Iâve known a (very few) good Java > developers. I would say, though, that Iâve known far more incompetent ones > than good ones, and I canât think of any incompetent Smalltalk developers > off the top of my head. > > > > Nor have I ever heard a developer in Smalltalk, or Haskell, or LISP, or > even C, complain about how hard maintaining state is or coming up with > various hacks to avoid it, which seems to be the main point of every > JavaScript based âtechnologyâ. An application is by definition a > state-machine, which implies plenty about JS developers on the whole. > > > > If youâre a good developer you can write good code in (nearly) anything. > My question then is why would you want to write in crap? The better > question is why arenât there more good developers in *any* language? > > > > Every project I have been able to do in Smalltalk, though, has had one > thing in common, the "shit has to work". Companies do use it, in fact I > could name 4 large enterprises Iâve worked for whoâve written their own > dialects, and they all use it only when "shit has to work". They know itâs > more productive, they also know using it for more things would increase the > availability of Smalltalk developers. > > > > Why do they not do it? One reason, though it takes a while to recognize > it, because management doesnât admit even to themselves why they do it, or > not very often. Being inefficient, as long as it doesnât âreallyâ matter, > is an advantage to large enterprises because they have resources smaller > competitors donât. > > > > Why donât their competitors do it? Because they canât see past an hourly > rate, whatâs fashionable, or just new, or because their customers canât. > Put more generally, average stupidity that isnât corrected by the market. > Fashion affects smaller companies more than larger ones, because they canât > afford a few customers walking away because they wanted an app in Electron, > even if they canât give any relevant reason for wanting it, and even the > samples on the Electron site donât work. > > > > Enterprises can, and do use Smalltalk when it matters. When it doesnât, > itâs to their advantage to promote things that are inefficient, buggy and > unreliable. > > > > Cost is relevant, but not in the simple way people look at things. A > crucial but rarely mentioned perspective on its relevance is that while > Java based software runs TV set top boxes, Smalltalk based software runs > things like medical equipment, automated defense systems, tanks, etc. Cost > becomes largely irrelevant when âshit has to workâ. > > > > Productivity is primarily relevant to less talented developers, in an > inversely sense, since unproductive environments and attitudes have a > leveling tendency in general, and more specifically make accomplishing what > the less talented are capable of in any environment sufficiently laborious > for them to have a role. Capability in Smalltalk, as implied by the person > hiring for the Java role I mentioned, is a fairly decent means of judging > whether someone is a so-so developer or a good one. > > > > The productivity argument is realistically only relevant in the context of > an already higher hourly cost. Given that it is relevant at that point, > companies that know Smalltalk is more productive would use it outside > things that have to be 100%, *if* their own productivity were relevant to > the same degree that competitorsâ productivity is inversely relevant. > > > > All these ways of looking at it are contingent perspectives though. Yes, > if the number of libraries is relevant to you, Smalltalk is less > attractive, but thatâs only a contingent phenomenon based on the relative > popularity of Java and JavaScript, as a result it canât be used as > explanatory *for* that popularity. All the ways of looking at it that > are fully determinate are determinate via contingencies of that kind, which > for the most part *are* precisely the other perspectives, including > productivity, cost, availability of developers, etc. None of them is *in > itself* anything but a result of the others. > > > > If availability of developers is contingent on popularity (and further, > popularity contingent on industry attitudes), to use an example already > mentioned in Joachimâs post, then his simultaneous posit of library > availability is if anything more contingent on the same popularity, so > positing it as a cause and not a result, or merely a correlate, of > popularity is incoherent. We can go one step further, and demonstrate that > even when large enterprises make something that works reliably available, > they fail to promote and support it, which destroys the market for reliable > tooling by simultaneously owning it while not promoting it, something IBM > is particularly good at. But IBM canât (and if they canât, neither can any > other company) operate that way without the tacit agreement of the > industry. > > > > To understand it in a more general way, software development has to be > looked at in the context where it occurs, and how itâs determined to a > large degree by that context, with a specific difference. That difference > is itself implicit in the context, i.e. capitalism, but only *purely *effective > in software development. Itâs a result of virtualization as an implicit > goal of capitalism, and the disruptions implicit in the virtual but so far > only realized completely in software. In terms of that understanding, the > analysis of virtualization and disruption as inherent to capitalism is > better accomplished in Kapital than in any more recent work. > > > > Or you can simply decide, as Iâve done recently, that working in ways and > with tools that prevent doing good work in a reasonable timeframe isnât > worthwhile *to you,* no matter how popular those ways and tools might be, > or what the posited reasons are, since at the end popularity is only > insofar as it *already* is. What those tools and methods are depends to > a degree on your priorities, but if developers are *engineers* those > priorities canât be completely arbitrary. Engineers are defined by their > ability to make things work. > > > > Software as virtual is inherently disruptive, and the software industry > disrupts itself too often and too easily to build on anything. A further > disruption caused by developers, *as* engineers, refusing to work with > crap that *doesnât*, i.e. insisting on being engineers, while in itself > merely an aggravation of the disruptive tendencies, might have an inverse > result. > > > > Using a stable core of technologies as the basis for a more volatile set > of products, in the way nearly every other industry does, is the best means > we know of to build things both flexibly and reasonably efficiently. The > computer hardware industry is the extreme example of this, while the > software industry is the extreme contradiction. > > > > *From: *Pharo-users <pharo-users-bounces(a)lists.pharo.org> on behalf of > David Mason <dmason(a)ryerson.ca> > *Reply-To: *Any question about pharo is welcome < > pharo-users(a)lists.pharo.org> > *Date: *Tuesday, October 24, 2017 at 11:52 AM > *To: *Any question about pharo is welcome <pharo-users(a)lists.pharo.org> > *Subject: *Re: [Pharo-users] Smalltalk Argument > > > > PharoJS is working to give you that mobile app/browser app experience. As > with others, we're not there yet, but getting there. See > http://pharojs.org > > > > The 67% loved means that 67% of people using Smalltalk (or perhaps have > ever used it) want to continue - so it's presumably a high percentage of a > smallish number of people. > > > > On 20 October 2017 at 03:23, jtuchel(a)objektfabrik.de < > jtuchel(a)objektfabrik.de> wrote: > > First of all: I'd say the question itself is not a question but an excuse. > I am not arguing there are enough Smalltalkers or cheap ones. But I think > the question is just a way of saying "we don't want to do it for reasons > that we ourselves cannot really express". If you are a good developer, > learning Smalltalk is easy. If you are a good developer you've heard the > sentence "we've taken the goos parts from x,y,z and Smalltalk" at least > twice a year. So you most likely would like to learn it anyways. > > A shortage of developers doesn't exist. What exists is an unwillingness of > companies to get people trained in a technology. If Smalltalk was cool and > great in their opinion, they wouldn't care. It's that simple. As a > consultant, I've heard that argument so often. Not ferom Startups, but from > insurance companies, Banks or Car manufacturers who spend millions on > useless, endless meetings and stuff instead of just hiring somebody to > teach a couple of developers Smalltalk. It's just a lie: the shortage of > Smalltalk developers is not a problem. > > And, to be honest: what is it we actually are better in by using > Smalltalk? > Can we build cool looking web apps in extremely short time? No. > Can we build mobile Apps with little effort? No. > Does our Smalltalk ship lots of great libraries for all kinds of things > that are not availabel in similar quality in any other language? > Are we lying when we say we are so extremely over-productive as compared > to other languages? > > I know, all that live debugging stuff and such is great and it is much > faster to find & fix a bug in Smalltalk than in any other environment I've > used so far. But that is really only true for business code. When I need to > connect to things or want to build a modern GUI or a web application with a > great look&feel, I am nowhere near productive, because I simply have to > build my own stuff or learn how to use other external resources. If I want > to build something for a mobile device, I will only hear that somebody > somewhere has done it before. No docs, no proof, no ready-made tool for me. > > > Shortage of developers is not really the problem. If Smalltalk was as cool > as we like to make ourselves believe, this problem would be non-existent. > If somebody took out their iPad and told an audience: "We did this in > Smalltalk in 40% of the time it would have taken in Swift", and if that > something was a must-have for people, things would be much easier. But > nobody has. > > > I am absolutely over-exaggerating, because I make my living with an SaaS > product written in Smalltalk (not Pharo). I have lots of fun with Smalltalk > and - as you - am convince that many parts of what we've done so far > would've taken much longer or even be impossible in other languages. But > the advantage was eaten by our extremely steep learning curve for web > technologies and for building something that works almost as well as tools > like Angular or jQuery Mobile. > > Smalltalk is cool, and the day somebody shows me something like Google's > flutter in Smalltalk, I am ready to bet a lot on a bright future for > Smalltalk. But until then, I'd say these arguments about productivity are > just us trying to make ourselves believe we're still the top of the food > chain. We've done that for almost thirty years now and still aren't ready > to stop it. But we've been lying to ourselves and still do so. > > I don't think there is a point in discussing about the usefulness of a > language using an argument like the number or ready-made developers. That > is just an argument they know you can't win. The real question is and > should be: what is the benefit of using Smalltalk. Our productivity > argument is a lie as soon as we have to build something that uses or runs > on technology that has been invented after 1990. > > > Okay, shoot ;-) > > Joachim > > > â > ââââââââââââââââââââââââ > Objektfabrik Joachim Tuchel mailto:jtuchel@objektfabrik.de > Fliederweg 1 http://www.objektfabrik.de > D-71640 Ludwigsburg http://joachimtuchel.wordpress.com > Telefon: +49 7141 56 10 86 0 Fax: +49 7141 56 10 86 1 > > > > >

Oct. 26, 2017

[ANN] Pharo Consortium New Platinum Member: JPMorgan Chase

by Marcus Denker

The Pharo Consortium is very happy to announce that JPMorgan Chase has joined the Consortium as a Platinum Member. About - JPMorgan Chase: https://www.jpmorganchase.com - Pharo Consortium: http://consortium.pharo.org The goal of the Pharo Consortium is to allow companies and institutions to support the ongoing development and future of Pharo. Individuals can support Pharo via the Pharo Association: - http://association.pharo.org

Oct. 26, 2017

Re: [Pharo-users] Smalltalk Argument

by henry

This is a goal of ParrotTalk, to bring bit-compatible communications to Squeak, Pharo and Java. This is not an invocation bridge you speak of but a communications bridge to be able to run against Hadoop or whichever big data needs integration with (Kafka). I had hoped it might be adopted for such. Yet again this is not exactly what you were looking for but yet interesting perhaps? - HH On Thu, Oct 26, 2017 at 02:17, phil(a)highoctane.be <[phil(a)highoctane.be]("mailto:phil@highoctane.be")> wrote: > I like that piece a lot, seeing exactly the described situation in large enterprises. > > I made a strategic decision to go with Pharo for the long run for my solutions because it is a stable base on which to build (ok, there are evolutions, but fundamentally, I can rely on it being under control and can maintain solutions in a version). > > The rationale is that at a deep level I am really fed up with having to deal with accidental complexity (now having to deal with Spark/Scala/sbt/Java/maven stuff) that makes the dev focus 80% technology drag and 20% net business contribution. > > One key thing is that a team needs guidance and Smalltalk makes it easier due to well known ways of doing things. > > Now we miss the boat on mobile and bigdata, but this is solvable. > > If we had an open Java bridge (and some people in the community have it for Pharo but do not open source it - so this is eminently doable) + Pharo as an embeddable piece (e.g. like Tcl and Lua) and not a big executable we would have a way to embed Pharo in a lot of places (e.g. in the Hadoop ecosystem where fast starting VMs and small footprint would make the cluster capacity x2 or x3 vs uberjars all over the place) this would be a real disruption. > > Think about being able to call Pharo from JNA [https://github.com/java-native-access/jna]("https://github.com/java-native-access/jna") the same way we use C with UFFI. > > Smalltalk argument for me is that it makes development bearable (even fun and enjoyable would I say) vs the other stacks. That matters. > > Phil > > On Thu, Oct 26, 2017 at 12:46 AM, Andrew Glynn <[aglynn42(a)gmail.com]("mailto:aglynn42@gmail.com")> wrote: > >> Thereâs other questions that are relevant to me: >> >> Do I give a f*** about cool looking web apps? No, I donât use web apps if in any way I can avoid it. >> >> Do I give a f*** about mobile apps? No, the screenâs too small to read anything longer than a twit, or anyone with anything worthwhile to say. >> >> Do I give a f*** about the number of libraries in other languages? No, because most of them are crap in every language Iâve had to work in, and the base languages are crap so they have to keep changing radically, and libraries and frameworks therefore also have to and never get any better. The few that are worthwhile I can almost always use from Smalltalk without a problem (read, Blender, ACT-R and Synapse, since every other library/framework Iâve used outside Smalltalk has been a waste of time). >> >> Do I give a f*** about implementing a complex piece of machine learning software in 22 hours, compared to 3 months for the Java version? Well, actually yes, I do, because that was 3 months of my life down the toilet for something that is too slow to be useful in Java. >> >> Any argument depends on your priorities. Iâve written tons of web apps, because I needed to get paid. Iâve written better shitty mobile apps than the average shitty mobile apps. However, Iâm not going to do any of that any longer in crap that never improves, because after 26 years the irritability it produces is more than itâs worth. >> >> A few weeks ago, a recruiter that specializes in Smalltalk called me about a job, although they were well aware I live 1500 miles away from the city I lived in when I had worked through them, to see if Iâd be willing to move back there for a job. That sounds like another âthere arenât enough Smalltalk developers", but it wasnât, because the job wasnât writing Smalltalk. It was writing Java. >> >> The person hiring, though, wouldnât look at anyone who didnât write Smalltalk, because "people who grew up with Java donât know how to write code". I donât agree with that, Iâve known a (very few) good Java developers. I would say, though, that Iâve known far more incompetent ones than good ones, and I canât think of any incompetent Smalltalk developers off the top of my head. >> >> Nor have I ever heard a developer in Smalltalk, or Haskell, or LISP, or even C, complain about how hard maintaining state is or coming up with various hacks to avoid it, which seems to be the main point of every JavaScript based âtechnologyâ. An application is by definition a state-machine, which implies plenty about JS developers on the whole. >> >> If youâre a good developer you can write good code in (nearly) anything. My question then is why would you want to write in crap? The better question is why arenât there more good developers in any language? >> >> Every project I have been able to do in Smalltalk, though, has had one thing in common, the "shit has to work". Companies do use it, in fact I could name 4 large enterprises Iâve worked for whoâve written their own dialects, and they all use it only when "shit has to work". They know itâs more productive, they also know using it for more things would increase the availability of Smalltalk developers. >> >> Why do they not do it? One reason, though it takes a while to recognize it, because management doesnât admit even to themselves why they do it, or not very often. Being inefficient, as long as it doesnât âreallyâ matter, is an advantage to large enterprises because they have resources smaller competitors donât. >> >> Why donât their competitors do it? Because they canât see past an hourly rate, whatâs fashionable, or just new, or because their customers canât. Put more generally, average stupidity that isnât corrected by the market. Fashion affects smaller companies more than larger ones, because they canât afford a few customers walking away because they wanted an app in Electron, even if they canât give any relevant reason for wanting it, and even the samples on the Electron site donât work. >> >> Enterprises can, and do use Smalltalk when it matters. When it doesnât, itâs to their advantage to promote things that are inefficient, buggy and unreliable. >> >> Cost is relevant, but not in the simple way people look at things. A crucial but rarely mentioned perspective on its relevance is that while Java based software runs TV set top boxes, Smalltalk based software runs things like medical equipment, automated defense systems, tanks, etc. Cost becomes largely irrelevant when âshit has to workâ. >> >> Productivity is primarily relevant to less talented developers, in an inversely sense, since unproductive environments and attitudes have a leveling tendency in general, and more specifically make accomplishing what the less talented are capable of in any environment sufficiently laborious for them to have a role. Capability in Smalltalk, as implied by the person hiring for the Java role I mentioned, is a fairly decent means of judging whether someone is a so-so developer or a good one. >> >> The productivity argument is realistically only relevant in the context of an already higher hourly cost. Given that it is relevant at that point, companies that know Smalltalk is more productive would use it outside things that have to be 100%, if their own productivity were relevant to the same degree that competitorsâ productivity is inversely relevant. >> >> All these ways of looking at it are contingent perspectives though. Yes, if the number of libraries is relevant to you, Smalltalk is less attractive, but thatâs only a contingent phenomenon based on the relative popularity of Java and JavaScript, as a result it canât be used as explanatory for that popularity. All the ways of looking at it that are fully determinate are determinate via contingencies of that kind, which for the most part are precisely the other perspectives, including productivity, cost, availability of developers, etc. None of them is in itself anything but a result of the others. >> >> If availability of developers is contingent on popularity (and further, popularity contingent on industry attitudes), to use an example already mentioned in Joachimâs post, then his simultaneous posit of library availability is if anything more contingent on the same popularity, so positing it as a cause and not a result, or merely a correlate, of popularity is incoherent. We can go one step further, and demonstrate that even when large enterprises make something that works reliably available, they fail to promote and support it, which destroys the market for reliable tooling by simultaneously owning it while not promoting it, something IBM is particularly good at. But IBM canât (and if they canât, neither can any other company) operate that way without the tacit agreement of the industry. >> >> To understand it in a more general way, software development has to be looked at in the context where it occurs, and how itâs determined to a large degree by that context, with a specific difference. That difference is itself implicit in the context, i.e. capitalism, but only purely effective in software development. Itâs a result of virtualization as an implicit goal of capitalism, and the disruptions implicit in the virtual but so far only realized completely in software. In terms of that understanding, the analysis of virtualization and disruption as inherent to capitalism is better accomplished in Kapital than in any more recent work. >> >> Or you can simply decide, as Iâve done recently, that working in ways and with tools that prevent doing good work in a reasonable timeframe isnât worthwhile to you, no matter how popular those ways and tools might be, or what the posited reasons are, since at the end popularity is only insofar as it already is. What those tools and methods are depends to a degree on your priorities, but if developers are engineers those priorities canât be completely arbitrary. Engineers are defined by their ability to make things work. >> >> Software as virtual is inherently disruptive, and the software industry disrupts itself too often and too easily to build on anything. A further disruption caused by developers, as engineers, refusing to work with crap that doesnât, i.e. insisting on being engineers, while in itself merely an aggravation of the disruptive tendencies, might have an inverse result. >> >> Using a stable core of technologies as the basis for a more volatile set of products, in the way nearly every other industry does, is the best means we know of to build things both flexibly and reasonably efficiently. The computer hardware industry is the extreme example of this, while the software industry is the extreme contradiction. >> >> From: Pharo-users <[pharo-users-bounces(a)lists.pharo.org]("mailto:pharo-users-bounces@lists.pharo.org")> on behalf of David Mason <[dmason(a)ryerson.ca]("mailto:dmason@ryerson.ca")> >> Reply-To: Any question about pharo is welcome <[pharo-users(a)lists.pharo.org]("mailto:pharo-users@lists.pharo.org")> >> Date: Tuesday, October 24, 2017 at 11:52 AM >> To: Any question about pharo is welcome <[pharo-users(a)lists.pharo.org]("mailto:pharo-users@lists.pharo.org")> >> Subject: Re: [Pharo-users] Smalltalk Argument >> >> PharoJS is working to give you that mobile app/browser app experience. As with others, we're not there yet, but getting there. See [http://pharojs.org]("http://pharojs.org") >> >> The 67% loved means that 67% of people using Smalltalk (or perhaps have ever used it) want to continue - so it's presumably a high percentage of a smallish number of people. >> >> On 20 October 2017 at 03:23, [jtuchel(a)objektfabrik.de]("mailto:jtuchel@objektfabrik.de") <[jtuchel(a)objektfabrik.de]("mailto:jtuchel@objektfabrik.de")> wrote: >> >>> First of all: I'd say the question itself is not a question but an excuse. I am not arguing there are enough Smalltalkers or cheap ones. But I think the question is just a way of saying "we don't want to do it for reasons that we ourselves cannot really express". If you are a good developer, learning Smalltalk is easy. If you are a good developer you've heard the sentence "we've taken the goos parts from x,y,z and Smalltalk" at least twice a year. So you most likely would like to learn it anyways. >>> >>> A shortage of developers doesn't exist. What exists is an unwillingness of companies to get people trained in a technology. If Smalltalk was cool and great in their opinion, they wouldn't care. It's that simple. As a consultant, I've heard that argument so often. Not ferom Startups, but from insurance companies, Banks or Car manufacturers who spend millions on useless, endless meetings and stuff instead of just hiring somebody to teach a couple of developers Smalltalk. It's just a lie: the shortage of Smalltalk developers is not a problem. >>> >>> And, to be honest: what is it we actually are better in by using Smalltalk? >>> Can we build cool looking web apps in extremely short time? No. >>> Can we build mobile Apps with little effort? No. >>> Does our Smalltalk ship lots of great libraries for all kinds of things that are not availabel in similar quality in any other language? >>> Are we lying when we say we are so extremely over-productive as compared to other languages? >>> >>> I know, all that live debugging stuff and such is great and it is much faster to find & fix a bug in Smalltalk than in any other environment I've used so far. But that is really only true for business code. When I need to connect to things or want to build a modern GUI or a web application with a great look&feel, I am nowhere near productive, because I simply have to build my own stuff or learn how to use other external resources. If I want to build something for a mobile device, I will only hear that somebody somewhere has done it before. No docs, no proof, no ready-made tool for me. >>> >>> Shortage of developers is not really the problem. If Smalltalk was as cool as we like to make ourselves believe, this problem would be non-existent. If somebody took out their iPad and told an audience: "We did this in Smalltalk in 40% of the time it would have taken in Swift", and if that something was a must-have for people, things would be much easier. But nobody has. >>> >>> I am absolutely over-exaggerating, because I make my living with an SaaS product written in Smalltalk (not Pharo). I have lots of fun with Smalltalk and - as you - am convince that many parts of what we've done so far would've taken much longer or even be impossible in other languages. But the advantage was eaten by our extremely steep learning curve for web technologies and for building something that works almost as well as tools like Angular or jQuery Mobile. >>> >>> Smalltalk is cool, and the day somebody shows me something like Google's flutter in Smalltalk, I am ready to bet a lot on a bright future for Smalltalk. But until then, I'd say these arguments about productivity are just us trying to make ourselves believe we're still the top of the food chain. We've done that for almost thirty years now and still aren't ready to stop it. But we've been lying to ourselves and still do so. >>> >>> I don't think there is a point in discussing about the usefulness of a language using an argument like the number or ready-made developers. That is just an argument they know you can't win. The real question is and should be: what is the benefit of using Smalltalk. Our productivity argument is a lie as soon as we have to build something that uses or runs on technology that has been invented after 1990. >>> >>> Okay, shoot ;-) >>> >>> Joachim >>> >>> â >>> ââââââââââââââââââââââââ >>> Objektfabrik Joachim Tuchel mailto:[jtuchel@objektfabrik.de]("mailto:jtuchel@objektfabrik.de") >>> Fliederweg 1 [http://www.objektfabrik.de]("http://www.objektfabrik.de") >>> D-71640 Ludwigsburg [http://joachimtuchel.wordpress.com]("http://joachimtuchel.wordpress.com") >>> Telefon: [+49 7141 56 10 86 0]("tel:%2B49%207141%2056%2010%2086%200") Fax: [+49 7141 56 10 86 1]("tel:%2B49%207141%2056%2010%2086%201")

Oct. 26, 2017

Re: [Pharo-users] Smalltalk Argument

by phil＠highoctane.be

I like that piece a lot, seeing exactly the described situation in large enterprises. I made a strategic decision to go with Pharo for the long run for my solutions because it is a stable base on which to build (ok, there are evolutions, but fundamentally, I can rely on it being under control and can maintain solutions in a version). The rationale is that at a deep level I am really fed up with having to deal with accidental complexity (now having to deal with Spark/Scala/sbt/Java/maven stuff) that makes the dev focus 80% technology drag and 20% net business contribution. One key thing is that a team needs guidance and Smalltalk makes it easier due to well known ways of doing things. Now we miss the boat on mobile and bigdata, but this is solvable. If we had an open Java bridge (and some people in the community have it for Pharo but do not open source it - so this is eminently doable) + Pharo as an embeddable piece (e.g. like Tcl and Lua) and not a big executable we would have a way to embed Pharo in a lot of places (e.g. in the Hadoop ecosystem where fast starting VMs and small footprint would make the cluster capacity x2 or x3 vs uberjars all over the place) this would be a real disruption. Think about being able to call Pharo from JNA https://github.com/java-native-access/jna the same way we use C with UFFI. Smalltalk argument for me is that it makes development bearable (even fun and enjoyable would I say) vs the other stacks. That matters. Phil On Thu, Oct 26, 2017 at 12:46 AM, Andrew Glynn <aglynn42(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Thereâs other questions that are relevant to me: > > > > Do I give a f*** about cool looking web apps? No, I donât use web apps if > in any way I can avoid it. > > > > Do I give a f*** about mobile apps? No, the screenâs too small to read > anything longer than a twit, or anyone with anything worthwhile to say. > > > > Do I give a f*** about the number of libraries in other languages? No, > because most of them are crap in every language Iâve had to work in, and > the base languages are crap so they have to keep changing radically, and > libraries and frameworks therefore also have to and never get any better. > The few that are worthwhile I can almost always use from Smalltalk without > a problem (read, Blender, ACT-R and Synapse, since every other > library/framework Iâve used outside Smalltalk has been a waste of time). > > > > Do I give a f*** about implementing a complex piece of machine learning > software in 22 hours, compared to 3 months for the Java version? Well, > actually yes, I do, because that was 3 months of my life down the toilet > for something that is too slow to be useful in Java. > > > > Any argument depends on your priorities. Iâve written tons of web apps, > because I needed to get paid. Iâve written better shitty mobile apps than > the average shitty mobile apps. However, Iâm not going to do any of that > any longer in crap that never improves, because after 26 years the > irritability it produces is more than itâs worth. > > > > A few weeks ago, a recruiter that specializes in Smalltalk called me about > a job, although they were well aware I live 1500 miles away from the city I > lived in when I had worked through them, to see if Iâd be willing to move > back there for a job. That sounds like another âthere arenât enough > Smalltalk developersâ, but it wasnât, because the job wasnât writing > Smalltalk. It was writing Java. > > > > The person hiring, though, wouldnât look at anyone who didnât write > Smalltalk, because âpeople who grew up with Java donât know how to write > codeâ. I donât agree with that, Iâve known a (very few) good Java > developers. I would say, though, that Iâve known far more incompetent ones > than good ones, and I canât think of any incompetent Smalltalk developers > off the top of my head. > > > > Nor have I ever heard a developer in Smalltalk, or Haskell, or LISP, or > even C, complain about how hard maintaining state is or coming up with > various hacks to avoid it, which seems to be the main point of every > JavaScript based âtechnologyâ. An application is by definition a > state-machine, which implies plenty about JS developers on the whole. > > > > If youâre a good developer you can write good code in (nearly) anything. > My question then is why would you want to write in crap? The better > question is why arenât there more good developers in *any* language? > > > > Every project I have been able to do in Smalltalk, though, has had one > thing in common, the âshit has to workâ. Companies do use it, in fact I > could name 4 large enterprises Iâve worked for whoâve written their own > dialects, and they all use it only when âshit has to workâ. They know itâs > more productive, they also know using it for more things would increase the > availability of Smalltalk developers. > > > > Why do they not do it? One reason, though it takes a while to recognize > it, because management doesnât admit even to themselves why they do it, or > not very often. Being inefficient, as long as it doesnât âreallyâ matter, > is an advantage to large enterprises because they have resources smaller > competitors donât. > > > > Why donât their competitors do it? Because they canât see past an hourly > rate, whatâs fashionable, or just new, or because their customers canât. > Put more generally, average stupidity that isnât corrected by the market. > Fashion affects smaller companies more than larger ones, because they canât > afford a few customers walking away because they wanted an app in Electron, > even if they canât give any relevant reason for wanting it, and even the > samples on the Electron site donât work. > > > > Enterprises can, and do use Smalltalk when it matters. When it doesnât, > itâs to their advantage to promote things that are inefficient, buggy and > unreliable. > > > > Cost is relevant, but not in the simple way people look at things. A > crucial but rarely mentioned perspective on its relevance is that while > Java based software runs TV set top boxes, Smalltalk based software runs > things like medical equipment, automated defense systems, tanks, etc. Cost > becomes largely irrelevant when âshit has to workâ. > > > > Productivity is primarily relevant to less talented developers, in an > inversely sense, since unproductive environments and attitudes have a > leveling tendency in general, and more specifically make accomplishing what > the less talented are capable of in any environment sufficiently laborious > for them to have a role. Capability in Smalltalk, as implied by the person > hiring for the Java role I mentioned, is a fairly decent means of judging > whether someone is a so-so developer or a good one. > > > > The productivity argument is realistically only relevant in the context of > an already higher hourly cost. Given that it is relevant at that point, > companies that know Smalltalk is more productive would use it outside > things that have to be 100%, *if* their own productivity were relevant to > the same degree that competitorsâ productivity is inversely relevant. > > > > All these ways of looking at it are contingent perspectives though. Yes, > if the number of libraries is relevant to you, Smalltalk is less > attractive, but thatâs only a contingent phenomenon based on the relative > popularity of Java and JavaScript, as a result it canât be used as > explanatory *for* that popularity. All the ways of looking at it that > are fully determinate are determinate via contingencies of that kind, which > for the most part *are* precisely the other perspectives, including > productivity, cost, availability of developers, etc. None of them is *in > itself* anything but a result of the others. > > > > If availability of developers is contingent on popularity (and further, > popularity contingent on industry attitudes), to use an example already > mentioned in Joachimâs post, then his simultaneous posit of library > availability is if anything more contingent on the same popularity, so > positing it as a cause and not a result, or merely a correlate, of > popularity is incoherent. We can go one step further, and demonstrate that > even when large enterprises make something that works reliably available, > they fail to promote and support it, which destroys the market for reliable > tooling by simultaneously owning it while not promoting it, something IBM > is particularly good at. But IBM canât (and if they canât, neither can any > other company) operate that way without the tacit agreement of the > industry. > > > > To understand it in a more general way, software development has to be > looked at in the context where it occurs, and how itâs determined to a > large degree by that context, with a specific difference. That difference > is itself implicit in the context, i.e. capitalism, but only *purely *effective > in software development. Itâs a result of virtualization as an implicit > goal of capitalism, and the disruptions implicit in the virtual but so far > only realized completely in software. In terms of that understanding, the > analysis of virtualization and disruption as inherent to capitalism is > better accomplished in Kapital than in any more recent work. > > > > Or you can simply decide, as Iâve done recently, that working in ways and > with tools that prevent doing good work in a reasonable timeframe isnât > worthwhile *to you,* no matter how popular those ways and tools might be, > or what the posited reasons are, since at the end popularity is only > insofar as it *already* is. What those tools and methods are depends to > a degree on your priorities, but if developers are *engineers* those > priorities canât be completely arbitrary. Engineers are defined by their > ability to make things work. > > > > Software as virtual is inherently disruptive, and the software industry > disrupts itself too often and too easily to build on anything. A further > disruption caused by developers, *as* engineers, refusing to work with > crap that *doesnât*, i.e. insisting on being engineers, while in itself > merely an aggravation of the disruptive tendencies, might have an inverse > result. > > > > Using a stable core of technologies as the basis for a more volatile set > of products, in the way nearly every other industry does, is the best means > we know of to build things both flexibly and reasonably efficiently. The > computer hardware industry is the extreme example of this, while the > software industry is the extreme contradiction. > > > > *From: *Pharo-users <pharo-users-bounces(a)lists.pharo.org> on behalf of > David Mason <dmason(a)ryerson.ca> > *Reply-To: *Any question about pharo is welcome < > pharo-users(a)lists.pharo.org> > *Date: *Tuesday, October 24, 2017 at 11:52 AM > *To: *Any question about pharo is welcome <pharo-users(a)lists.pharo.org> > *Subject: *Re: [Pharo-users] Smalltalk Argument > > > > PharoJS is working to give you that mobile app/browser app experience. As > with others, we're not there yet, but getting there. See > http://pharojs.org > > > > The 67% loved means that 67% of people using Smalltalk (or perhaps have > ever used it) want to continue - so it's presumably a high percentage of a > smallish number of people. > > > > On 20 October 2017 at 03:23, jtuchel(a)objektfabrik.de < > jtuchel(a)objektfabrik.de> wrote: > > First of all: I'd say the question itself is not a question but an excuse. > I am not arguing there are enough Smalltalkers or cheap ones. But I think > the question is just a way of saying "we don't want to do it for reasons > that we ourselves cannot really express". If you are a good developer, > learning Smalltalk is easy. If you are a good developer you've heard the > sentence "we've taken the goos parts from x,y,z and Smalltalk" at least > twice a year. So you most likely would like to learn it anyways. > > A shortage of developers doesn't exist. What exists is an unwillingness of > companies to get people trained in a technology. If Smalltalk was cool and > great in their opinion, they wouldn't care. It's that simple. As a > consultant, I've heard that argument so often. Not ferom Startups, but from > insurance companies, Banks or Car manufacturers who spend millions on > useless, endless meetings and stuff instead of just hiring somebody to > teach a couple of developers Smalltalk. It's just a lie: the shortage of > Smalltalk developers is not a problem. > > And, to be honest: what is it we actually are better in by using Smalltalk? > Can we build cool looking web apps in extremely short time? No. > Can we build mobile Apps with little effort? No. > Does our Smalltalk ship lots of great libraries for all kinds of things > that are not availabel in similar quality in any other language? > Are we lying when we say we are so extremely over-productive as compared > to other languages? > > I know, all that live debugging stuff and such is great and it is much > faster to find & fix a bug in Smalltalk than in any other environment I've > used so far. But that is really only true for business code. When I need to > connect to things or want to build a modern GUI or a web application with a > great look&feel, I am nowhere near productive, because I simply have to > build my own stuff or learn how to use other external resources. If I want > to build something for a mobile device, I will only hear that somebody > somewhere has done it before. No docs, no proof, no ready-made tool for me. > > > Shortage of developers is not really the problem. If Smalltalk was as cool > as we like to make ourselves believe, this problem would be non-existent. > If somebody took out their iPad and told an audience: "We did this in > Smalltalk in 40% of the time it would have taken in Swift", and if that > something was a must-have for people, things would be much easier. But > nobody has. > > > I am absolutely over-exaggerating, because I make my living with an SaaS > product written in Smalltalk (not Pharo). I have lots of fun with Smalltalk > and - as you - am convince that many parts of what we've done so far > would've taken much longer or even be impossible in other languages. But > the advantage was eaten by our extremely steep learning curve for web > technologies and for building something that works almost as well as tools > like Angular or jQuery Mobile. > > Smalltalk is cool, and the day somebody shows me something like Google's > flutter in Smalltalk, I am ready to bet a lot on a bright future for > Smalltalk. But until then, I'd say these arguments about productivity are > just us trying to make ourselves believe we're still the top of the food > chain. We've done that for almost thirty years now and still aren't ready > to stop it. But we've been lying to ourselves and still do so. > > I don't think there is a point in discussing about the usefulness of a > language using an argument like the number or ready-made developers. That > is just an argument they know you can't win. The real question is and > should be: what is the benefit of using Smalltalk. Our productivity > argument is a lie as soon as we have to build something that uses or runs > on technology that has been invented after 1990. > > > Okay, shoot ;-) > > Joachim > > > -- > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > Objektfabrik Joachim Tuchel mailto:jtuchel@objektfabrik.de > Fliederweg 1 http://www.objektfabrik.de > D-71640 Ludwigsburg http://joachimtuchel.wordpress.com > Telefon: +49 7141 56 10 86 0 Fax: +49 7141 56 10 86 1 > > >

Oct. 26, 2017

Re: [Pharo-users] Smalltalk Argument

by henry

Itâs well said, I donât give a f*** about other languages. NSA-proof, anonymized 2048-bit key rendezvoused connection framework in 33 classes. Includes user definable cipher and encoder. SmalltalkHub talkin ParrotTalk. http://www.squeaksource.com/Cryptography/ParrotTalk-HenryHouse.3.mcz - HH On Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 18:46, Andrew Glynn <[aglynn42(a)gmail.com]("mailto:aglynn42@gmail.com")> wrote: > Thereâs other questions that are relevant to me: > > Do I give a f*** about cool looking web apps? No, I donât use web apps if in any way I can avoid it. > > Do I give a f*** about mobile apps? No, the screenâs too small to read anything longer than a twit, or anyone with anything worthwhile to say. > > Do I give a f*** about the number of libraries in other languages? No, because most of them are crap in every language Iâve had to work in, and the base languages are crap so they have to keep changing radically, and libraries and frameworks therefore also have to and never get any better. The few that are worthwhile I can almost always use from Smalltalk without a problem (read, Blender, ACT-R and Synapse, since every other library/framework Iâve used outside Smalltalk has been a waste of time). > > Do I give a f*** about implementing a complex piece of machine learning software in 22 hours, compared to 3 months for the Java version? Well, actually yes, I do, because that was 3 months of my life down the toilet for something that is too slow to be useful in Java. > > Any argument depends on your priorities. Iâve written tons of web apps, because I needed to get paid. Iâve written better shitty mobile apps than the average shitty mobile apps. However, Iâm not going to do any of that any longer in crap that never improves, because after 26 years the irritability it produces is more than itâs worth. > > A few weeks ago, a recruiter that specializes in Smalltalk called me about a job, although they were well aware I live 1500 miles away from the city I lived in when I had worked through them, to see if Iâd be willing to move back there for a job. That sounds like another âthere arenât enough Smalltalk developers", but it wasnât, because the job wasnât writing Smalltalk. It was writing Java. > > The person hiring, though, wouldnât look at anyone who didnât write Smalltalk, because "people who grew up with Java donât know how to write code". I donât agree with that, Iâve known a (very few) good Java developers. I would say, though, that Iâve known far more incompetent ones than good ones, and I canât think of any incompetent Smalltalk developers off the top of my head. > > Nor have I ever heard a developer in Smalltalk, or Haskell, or LISP, or even C, complain about how hard maintaining state is or coming up with various hacks to avoid it, which seems to be the main point of every JavaScript based âtechnologyâ. An application is by definition a state-machine, which implies plenty about JS developers on the whole. > > If youâre a good developer you can write good code in (nearly) anything. My question then is why would you want to write in crap? The better question is why arenât there more good developers in any language? > > Every project I have been able to do in Smalltalk, though, has had one thing in common, the "shit has to work". Companies do use it, in fact I could name 4 large enterprises Iâve worked for whoâve written their own dialects, and they all use it only when "shit has to work". They know itâs more productive, they also know using it for more things would increase the availability of Smalltalk developers. > > Why do they not do it? One reason, though it takes a while to recognize it, because management doesnât admit even to themselves why they do it, or not very often. Being inefficient, as long as it doesnât âreallyâ matter, is an advantage to large enterprises because they have resources smaller competitors donât. > > Why donât their competitors do it? Because they canât see past an hourly rate, whatâs fashionable, or just new, or because their customers canât. Put more generally, average stupidity that isnât corrected by the market. Fashion affects smaller companies more than larger ones, because they canât afford a few customers walking away because they wanted an app in Electron, even if they canât give any relevant reason for wanting it, and even the samples on the Electron site donât work. > > Enterprises can, and do use Smalltalk when it matters. When it doesnât, itâs to their advantage to promote things that are inefficient, buggy and unreliable. > > Cost is relevant, but not in the simple way people look at things. A crucial but rarely mentioned perspective on its relevance is that while Java based software runs TV set top boxes, Smalltalk based software runs things like medical equipment, automated defense systems, tanks, etc. Cost becomes largely irrelevant when âshit has to workâ. > > Productivity is primarily relevant to less talented developers, in an inversely sense, since unproductive environments and attitudes have a leveling tendency in general, and more specifically make accomplishing what the less talented are capable of in any environment sufficiently laborious for them to have a role. Capability in Smalltalk, as implied by the person hiring for the Java role I mentioned, is a fairly decent means of judging whether someone is a so-so developer or a good one. > > The productivity argument is realistically only relevant in the context of an already higher hourly cost. Given that it is relevant at that point, companies that know Smalltalk is more productive would use it outside things that have to be 100%, if their own productivity were relevant to the same degree that competitorsâ productivity is inversely relevant. > > All these ways of looking at it are contingent perspectives though. Yes, if the number of libraries is relevant to you, Smalltalk is less attractive, but thatâs only a contingent phenomenon based on the relative popularity of Java and JavaScript, as a result it canât be used as explanatory for that popularity. All the ways of looking at it that are fully determinate are determinate via contingencies of that kind, which for the most part are precisely the other perspectives, including productivity, cost, availability of developers, etc. None of them is in itself anything but a result of the others. > > If availability of developers is contingent on popularity (and further, popularity contingent on industry attitudes), to use an example already mentioned in Joachimâs post, then his simultaneous posit of library availability is if anything more contingent on the same popularity, so positing it as a cause and not a result, or merely a correlate, of popularity is incoherent. We can go one step further, and demonstrate that even when large enterprises make something that works reliably available, they fail to promote and support it, which destroys the market for reliable tooling by simultaneously owning it while not promoting it, something IBM is particularly good at. But IBM canât (and if they canât, neither can any other company) operate that way without the tacit agreement of the industry. > > To understand it in a more general way, software development has to be looked at in the context where it occurs, and how itâs determined to a large degree by that context, with a specific difference. That difference is itself implicit in the context, i.e. capitalism, but only purely effective in software development. Itâs a result of virtualization as an implicit goal of capitalism, and the disruptions implicit in the virtual but so far only realized completely in software. In terms of that understanding, the analysis of virtualization and disruption as inherent to capitalism is better accomplished in Kapital than in any more recent work. > > Or you can simply decide, as Iâve done recently, that working in ways and with tools that prevent doing good work in a reasonable timeframe isnât worthwhile to you, no matter how popular those ways and tools might be, or what the posited reasons are, since at the end popularity is only insofar as it already is. What those tools and methods are depends to a degree on your priorities, but if developers are engineers those priorities canât be completely arbitrary. Engineers are defined by their ability to make things work. > > Software as virtual is inherently disruptive, and the software industry disrupts itself too often and too easily to build on anything. A further disruption caused by developers, as engineers, refusing to work with crap that doesnât, i.e. insisting on being engineers, while in itself merely an aggravation of the disruptive tendencies, might have an inverse result. > > Using a stable core of technologies as the basis for a more volatile set of products, in the way nearly every other industry does, is the best means we know of to build things both flexibly and reasonably efficiently. The computer hardware industry is the extreme example of this, while the software industry is the extreme contradiction. > > From: Pharo-users <pharo-users-bounces(a)lists.pharo.org> on behalf of David Mason <dmason(a)ryerson.ca> > Reply-To: Any question about pharo is welcome <pharo-users(a)lists.pharo.org> > Date: Tuesday, October 24, 2017 at 11:52 AM > To: Any question about pharo is welcome <pharo-users(a)lists.pharo.org> > Subject: Re: [Pharo-users] Smalltalk Argument > > PharoJS is working to give you that mobile app/browser app experience. As with others, weâre not there yet, but getting there. See [http://pharojs.org]("http://pharojs.org") > > The 67% loved means that 67% of people using Smalltalk (or perhaps have ever used it) want to continue - so itâs presumably a high percentage of a smallish number of people. > > On 20 October 2017 at 03:23, [jtuchel(a)objektfabrik.de]("mailto:jtuchel@objektfabrik.de") <[jtuchel(a)objektfabrik.de]("mailto:jtuchel@objektfabrik.de")> wrote: > >> First of all: Iâd say the question itself is not a question but an excuse. I am not arguing there are enough Smalltalkers or cheap ones. But I think the question is just a way of saying "we donât want to do it for reasons that we ourselves cannot really express". If you are a good developer, learning Smalltalk is easy. If you are a good developer youâve heard the sentence "weâve taken the goos parts from x,y,z and Smalltalk" at least twice a year. So you most likely would like to learn it anyways. >> >> A shortage of developers doesnât exist. What exists is an unwillingness of companies to get people trained in a technology. If Smalltalk was cool and great in their opinion, they wouldnât care. Itâs that simple. As a consultant, Iâve heard that argument so often. Not ferom Startups, but from insurance companies, Banks or Car manufacturers who spend millions on useless, endless meetings and stuff instead of just hiring somebody to teach a couple of developers Smalltalk. Itâs just a lie: the shortage of Smalltalk developers is not a problem. >> >> And, to be honest: what is it we actually are better in by using Smalltalk? >> Can we build cool looking web apps in extremely short time? No. >> Can we build mobile Apps with little effort? No. >> Does our Smalltalk ship lots of great libraries for all kinds of things that are not availabel in similar quality in any other language? >> Are we lying when we say we are so extremely over-productive as compared to other languages? >> >> I know, all that live debugging stuff and such is great and it is much faster to find & fix a bug in Smalltalk than in any other environment Iâve used so far. But that is really only true for business code. When I need to connect to things or want to build a modern GUI or a web application with a great look&feel, I am nowhere near productive, because I simply have to build my own stuff or learn how to use other external resources. If I want to build something for a mobile device, I will only hear that somebody somewhere has done it before. No docs, no proof, no ready-made tool for me. >> >> Shortage of developers is not really the problem. If Smalltalk was as cool as we like to make ourselves believe, this problem would be non-existent. If somebody took out their iPad and told an audience: "We did this in Smalltalk in 40% of the time it would have taken in Swift", and if that something was a must-have for people, things would be much easier. But nobody has. >> >> I am absolutely over-exaggerating, because I make my living with an SaaS product written in Smalltalk (not Pharo). I have lots of fun with Smalltalk and - as you - am convince that many parts of what weâve done so far wouldâve taken much longer or even be impossible in other languages. But the advantage was eaten by our extremely steep learning curve for web technologies and for building something that works almost as well as tools like Angular or jQuery Mobile. >> >> Smalltalk is cool, and the day somebody shows me something like Googleâs flutter in Smalltalk, I am ready to bet a lot on a bright future for Smalltalk. But until then, Iâd say these arguments about productivity are just us trying to make ourselves believe weâre still the top of the food chain. Weâve done that for almost thirty years now and still arenât ready to stop it. But weâve been lying to ourselves and still do so. >> >> I donât think there is a point in discussing about the usefulness of a language using an argument like the number or ready-made developers. That is just an argument they know you canât win. The real question is and should be: what is the benefit of using Smalltalk. Our productivity argument is a lie as soon as we have to build something that uses or runs on technology that has been invented after 1990. >> >> Okay, shoot ;-) >> >> Joachim >> >> â >> ââââââââââââââââââââââââ >> Objektfabrik Joachim Tuchel mailto:[jtuchel@objektfabrik.de]("mailto:jtuchel@objektfabrik.de") >> Fliederweg 1 [http://www.objektfabrik.de]("http://www.objektfabrik.de") >> D-71640 Ludwigsburg [http://joachimtuchel.wordpress.com]("http://joachimtuchel.wordpress.com") >> Telefon: [+49 7141 56 10 86 0]("tel:%2B49%207141%2056%2010%2086%200") Fax: [+49 7141 56 10 86 1]("tel:%2B49%207141%2056%2010%2086%201")

Oct. 25, 2017

Re: [Pharo-users] Smalltalk Argument

by Andrew Glynn

Thereâs other questions that are relevant to me: Do I give a f*** about cool looking web apps?Â No, I donât use web apps if in any way I can avoid it. Do I give a f*** about mobile apps?Â No, the screenâs too small to read anything longer than a twit, or anyone with anything worthwhile to say. Do I give a f*** about the number of libraries in other languages?Â No, because most of them are crap in every language Iâve had to work in, and the base languages are crap so they have to keep changing radically, and libraries and frameworks therefore also have to and never get any better. The few that are worthwhile I can almost always use from Smalltalk without a problem (read, Blender, ACT-R and Synapse, since every other library/framework Iâve used outside Smalltalk has been a waste of time).Â Do I give a f*** about implementing a complex piece of machine learning software in 22 hours, compared to 3 months for the Java version?Â Well, actually yes, I do, because that was 3 months of my life down the toilet for something that is too slow to be useful in Java. Any argument depends on your priorities. Iâve written tons of web apps, because I needed to get paid.Â Iâve written better shitty mobile apps than the average shitty mobile apps.Â However, Iâm not going to do any of that any longer in crap that never improves, because after 26 years the irritability it produces is more than itâs worth.Â A few weeks ago, a recruiter that specializes in Smalltalk called me about a job, although they were well aware I live 1500 miles away from the city I lived in when I had worked through them, to see if Iâd be willing to move back there for a job.Â That sounds like another âthere arenât enough Smalltalk developersâ, but it wasnât, because the job wasnât writing Smalltalk.Â It was writing Java. The person hiring, though, wouldnât look at anyone who didnât write Smalltalk, because âpeople who grew up with Java donât know how to write codeâ.Â I donât agree with that, Iâve known a (very few) good Java developers.Â I would say, though, that Iâve known far more incompetent ones than good ones, and I canât think of any incompetent Smalltalk developers off the top of my head.Â Nor have I ever heard a developer in Smalltalk, or Haskell, or LISP, or even C, complain about how hard maintaining state is or coming up with various hacks to avoid it, which seems to be the main point of every JavaScript based âtechnologyâ.Â An application is by definition a state-machine, which implies plenty about JS developers on the whole. If youâre a good developer you can write good code in (nearly) anything. Â My question then is why would you want to write in crap? Â The better question is why arenât there more good developers in any language? Every project I have been able to do in Smalltalk, though, has had one thing in common, the âshit has to workâ.Â Companies do use it, in fact I could name 4 large enterprises Iâve worked for whoâve written their own dialects, and they all use it only when âshit has to workâ.Â They know itâs more productive, they also know using it for more things would increase the availability of Smalltalk developers.Â Why do they not do it?Â One reason, though it takes a while to recognize it, because management doesnât admit even to themselves why they do it, or not very often.Â Being inefficient, as long as it doesnât âreallyâ matter, is an advantage to large enterprises because they have resources smaller competitors donât.Â Why donât their competitors do it?Â Because they canât see past an hourly rate, whatâs fashionable, or just new, or because their customers canât. Â Put more generally, average stupidity that isnât corrected by the market.Â Fashion affects smaller companies more than larger ones, because they canât afford a few customers walking away because they wanted an app in Electron, even if they canât give any relevant reason for wanting it, and even the samples on the Electron site donât work.Â Enterprises can, and do use Smalltalk when it matters.Â When it doesnât, itâs to their advantage to promote things that are inefficient, buggy and unreliable. Cost is relevant, but not in the simple way people look at things.Â A crucial but rarely mentioned perspective on its relevance is that while Java based software runs TV set top boxes, Smalltalk based software runs things like medical equipment, automated defense systems, tanks, etc.Â Cost becomes largely irrelevant when âshit has to workâ.Â Productivity is primarily relevant to less talented developers, in an inversely sense, since unproductive environments and attitudes have a leveling tendency in general, and more specifically make accomplishing what the less talented are capable of in any environment sufficiently laborious for them to have a role.Â Capability in Smalltalk, as implied by the person hiring for the Java role I mentioned, is a fairly decent means of judging whether someone is a so-so developer or a good one. The productivity argument is realistically only relevant in the context of an already higher hourly cost.Â Given that it is relevant at that point, companies that know Smalltalk is more productive would use it outside things that have to be 100%, if their own productivity were relevant to the same degree that competitorsâ productivity is inversely relevant. All these ways of looking at it are contingent perspectives though.Â Yes, if the number of libraries is relevant to you, Smalltalk is less attractive, but thatâs only a contingent phenomenon based on the relative popularity of Java and JavaScript, as a result it canât be used as explanatory for that popularity.Â All the ways of looking at it that are fully determinate are determinate via contingencies of that kind, which for the most part are precisely the other perspectives, including productivity, cost, availability of developers, etc.Â None of them is in itself anything but a result of the others.Â If availability of developers is contingent on popularity (and further, popularity contingent on industry attitudes), to use an example already mentioned in Joachimâs post, then his simultaneous posit of library availability is if anything more contingent on the same popularity, so positing it as a cause and not a result, or merely a correlate, of popularity is incoherent.Â We can go one step further, and demonstrate that even when large enterprises make something that works reliably available, they fail to promote and support it, which destroys the market for reliable tooling by simultaneously owning it while not promoting it, something IBM is particularly good at.Â But IBM canât (and if they canât, neither can any other company) operate that way without the tacit agreement of the industry.Â To understand it in a more general way, software development has to be looked at in the context where it occurs, and how itâs determined to a large degree by that context, with a specific difference.Â That difference is itself implicit in the context, i.e. capitalism, but only purely effective in software development. Itâs a result of virtualization as an implicit goal of capitalism, and the disruptions implicit in the virtual but so far only realized completely in software.Â In terms of that understanding, the analysis of virtualization and disruption as inherent to capitalism is better accomplished in Kapital than in any more recent work. Or you can simply decide, as Iâve done recently, that working in ways and with tools that prevent doing good work in a reasonable timeframe isnât worthwhile to you, no matter how popular those ways and tools might be, or what the posited reasons are, since at the end popularity is only insofar as it already is.Â What those tools and methods are depends to a degree on your priorities, but if developers are engineers those priorities canât be completely arbitrary.Â Engineers are defined by their ability to make things work. Software as virtual is inherently disruptive, and the software industry disrupts itself too often and too easily to build on anything. A further disruption caused by developers, as engineers, refusing to work with crap that doesnât, i.e. insisting on being engineers, while in itself merely an aggravation of the disruptive tendencies, might have an inverse result. Using a stable core of technologies as the basis for a more volatile set of products, in the way nearly every other industry does, is the best means we know of to build things both flexibly and reasonably efficiently. Â The computer hardware industry is the extreme example of this, while the software industry is the extreme contradiction. From: Pharo-users <pharo-users-bounces(a)lists.pharo.org> on behalf of David Mason <dmason(a)ryerson.ca> Reply-To: Any question about pharo is welcome <pharo-users(a)lists.pharo.org> Date: Tuesday, October 24, 2017 at 11:52 AM To: Any question about pharo is welcome <pharo-users(a)lists.pharo.org> Subject: Re: [Pharo-users] Smalltalk Argument PharoJS is working to give you that mobile app/browser app experience. As with others, we're not there yet, but getting there. See http://pharojs.org The 67% loved means that 67% of people using Smalltalk (or perhaps have ever used it) want to continue - so it's presumably a high percentage of a smallish number of people. On 20 October 2017 at 03:23, jtuchel(a)objektfabrik.de <jtuchel(a)objektfabrik.de> wrote: First of all: I'd say the question itself is not a question but an excuse. I am not arguing there are enough Smalltalkers or cheap ones. But I think the question is just a way of saying "we don't want to do it for reasons that we ourselves cannot really express". If you are a good developer, learning Smalltalk is easy. If you are a good developer you've heard the sentence "we've taken the goos parts from x,y,z and Smalltalk" at least twice a year. So you most likely would like to learn it anyways. A shortage of developers doesn't exist. What exists is an unwillingness of companies to get people trained in a technology. If Smalltalk was cool and great in their opinion, they wouldn't care. It's that simple. As a consultant, I've heard that argument so often. Not ferom Startups, but from insurance companies, Banks or Car manufacturers who spend millions on useless, endless meetings and stuff instead of just hiring somebody to teach a couple of developers Smalltalk. It's just a lie: the shortage of Smalltalk developers is not a problem. And, to be honest: what is it we actually are better in by using Smalltalk? Can we build cool looking web apps in extremely short time? No. Can we build mobile Apps with little effort? No. Does our Smalltalk ship lots of great libraries for all kinds of things that are not availabel in similar quality in any other language? Are we lying when we say we are so extremely over-productive as compared to other languages? I know, all that live debugging stuff and such is great and it is much faster to find & fix a bug in Smalltalk than in any other environment I've used so far. But that is really only true for business code. When I need to connect to things or want to build a modern GUI or a web application with a great look&feel, I am nowhere near productive, because I simply have to build my own stuff or learn how to use other external resources. If I want to build something for a mobile device, I will only hear that somebody somewhere has done it before. No docs, no proof, no ready-made tool for me. Shortage of developers is not really the problem. If Smalltalk was as cool as we like to make ourselves believe, this problem would be non-existent. If somebody took out their iPad and told an audience: "We did this in Smalltalk in 40% of the time it would have taken in Swift", and if that something was a must-have for people, things would be much easier. But nobody has. I am absolutely over-exaggerating, because I make my living with an SaaS product written in Smalltalk (not Pharo). I have lots of fun with Smalltalk and - as you - am convince that many parts of what we've done so far would've taken much longer or even be impossible in other languages. But the advantage was eaten by our extremely steep learning curve for web technologies and for building something that works almost as well as tools like Angular or jQuery Mobile. Smalltalk is cool, and the day somebody shows me something like Google's flutter in Smalltalk, I am ready to bet a lot on a bright future for Smalltalk. But until then, I'd say these arguments about productivity are just us trying to make ourselves believe we're still the top of the food chain. We've done that for almost thirty years now and still aren't ready to stop it. But we've been lying to ourselves and still do so. I don't think there is a point in discussing about the usefulness of a language using an argument like the number or ready-made developers. That is just an argument they know you can't win. The real question is and should be: what is the benefit of using Smalltalk. Our productivity argument is a lie as soon as we have to build something that uses or runs on technology that has been invented after 1990. Okay, shoot ;-) Joachim -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Objektfabrik Joachim Tuchel mailto:jtuchel@objektfabrik.de Fliederweg 1 http://www.objektfabrik.de D-71640 Ludwigsburg http://joachimtuchel.wordpress.com Telefon: +49 7141 56 10 86 0 Fax: +49 7141 56 10 86 1

Oct. 25, 2017

Annual online conference?

by PAUL DEBRUICKER

Laravel.com is a PHP web framework. Their community organizes an online conference: https://laracon.net/2017 Seems like it could be worthy of mimicking in the Smalltalk community.

Oct. 25, 2017

Re: [Pharo-users] Binary Decision Diagram Package in Smalltalk

by Tim Mackinnon

Phil presented an Xmpp integration at Pharo days - I understood that was a common comms mechanism too. Tim Sent from my iPhone > On 25 Oct 2017, at 20:39, Stephane Ducasse <stepharo.self(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi andrew > > I think that Avi did a package about BDD (but I thought it was special > binary trees) so this is probably the same. > Did you check on Squeaksource? > http://www.squeaksource.com/BTree.html > If this is what you are looking for I can help porting it to Pharo. > > Stef > > >> On Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 9:02 PM, Prof. Andrew P. Black <black(a)cs.pdx.edu> wrote: >> Does anyone know of a BDD â thatâs Binary Decision Diagram â package written in Smalltalk? >> >> Andrew >> >> >

Oct. 25, 2017

Re: [Pharo-users] Binary Decision Diagram Package in Smalltalk

by Stephane Ducasse

Hi andrew I think that Avi did a package about BDD (but I thought it was special binary trees) so this is probably the same. Did you check on Squeaksource? http://www.squeaksource.com/BTree.html If this is what you are looking for I can help porting it to Pharo. Stef On Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 9:02 PM, Prof. Andrew P. Black <black(a)cs.pdx.edu> wrote: > Does anyone know of a BDD â thatâs Binary Decision Diagram â package written in Smalltalk? > > Andrew > >

Oct. 25, 2017

Binary Decision Diagram Package in Smalltalk

by Prof. Andrew P. Black

Does anyone know of a BDD â thatâs Binary Decision Diagram â package written in Smalltalk? Andrew

Oct. 25, 2017