On 10/01/20 1:52 p. m., horrido wrote:
Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas-2 wrote
But I have not being able to convince any of my coder friends to switch to Pharo instead of C++, Java or Javacript, which by the way, is the language they already know and use to put bread on the table on a daily basis.
So I think that we deal with a paradox: while Smalltalk advocacy is better suited for a Blue Ocean Strategy[2], exploring and implementing new/emerging scenarios and markets, money is already mostly invested in Red Oceans of constituted technologies and practices ecosystems. Bridging both is pretty difficult. Yes, that is the principal obstacle and challenge. When I'm pushing Smalltalk, I mention the language's simplicity and conciseness, I mention the purity of the object-oriented model, I mention the built-in IDE, and so on. But the key advantage that I emphasize is *programmer productivity*.
I realize it's hard to argue with the availability of jobs for Java, Python, JavaScript, etc. It's hard to argue with their rich ecosystems. It's hard to argue with the status quo of established code bases and IT infrastructures. But we have to make them believe that Smalltalk can cut their development time in half, if not better.
What is it worth to a company to cut their development time in half? It means much lower development cost. It means much shorter "time to market."
Is this not worth investing time and energy in Smalltalk? Even if the job opportunities aren't there. Even if it means overhauling your IT infrastructure.
The investment can lead to more users and more jobs. If they don't believe it, then we have failed.
I have invested time and energy in Smalltalk. Since 2014 I have organized 500+ hours of workshops and hackathons which lead us to our local success story [1]. [1] https://mutabit.com/repos.fossil/grafoscopio/doc/tip/Docs/En/success-story.m... But, from that experience, I see pretty difficult that coders which are already using other languages and frameworks for their daily jobs, use Pharo/Smalltalk when precisely their jobs is to maintain and extend the stuff that they are already using. I have had better experience with non coders (i.e: librarians, journalists and so on), presenting such "new" ideas and practices. Grafoscopio is suited at non-coders that don't mind to code or are curious about coding, but they need to intertwine code with prose, data and visualization. I think that a place where coders and non-coders can meet is at Blue Ocean places (that's why I'm starting to explore Scuttlebutt protocol). Can we start to find such blue oceans to explore together in a playful and practical sense, where we can showcase the advantages of Pharo/Smalltalk ? That could be a pretty good advocacy. Cheers, Offray