Re: [Pharo-users] perspective request for those earningalivingfromSmalltalk

OpenDoc was also very cool, but without branding, where would M$ be? Sent from Mail for Windows 10 From: Thierry Goubier Sent: Monday, November 6, 2017 2:48 PM To: pharo-users@lists.pharo.org Subject: Re: [Pharo-users] perspective request for those earningalivingfromSmalltalk Hi Andrew, Le 06/11/2017 à 19:59, Andrew Glynn a écrit :

I /suspect/ that a (mostly repressed) underlying sense that a reliable, inexpensive platform, if popular, would have been more detrimental to IBM than to its smaller competitors. The same goes for the VisualAge family -> Smalltalk (sold now by Instantiations at v. 9.0), Java, C++ and COBOL.  One of the (largely unthought) reasons for Smalltalk’s difficulties in the 1990’s, when hardware could run it decently, was that it took a fair number of resources/time to write a decent version, while using it would have been a bigger advantage to smaller companies than to the companies with the money to develop one.  The result was that only a few, very expensive versions were publicly available.  VA Smalltalk still retails at ~$8500 / seat.

Those kinds of hazy (because not admitted to oneself) reasons for doing things end up resulting in apparently contradictory actions such as spending large amounts writing something, releasing it, then failing to support it with any sales or marketing push, and even actively undermining it.  Nobody wants to fully admit that inefficiencies are actually to their advantage, which is the reason it’s repressed (implying both known /and/ not known, simultaneously).

I’m totally speculating of course and may be dead wrong, but it fits with other IBM actions and non-actions.  IBM is a strange company that sees itself, partly for good reason, as a business that must make money /and/ as an international resource that must continue to exist. Though the latter depends to a degree on the former, they don’t always imply the same specific decisions.

Interestingly, to prove the scalability of a VM based system IBM wrote “RVM” (originally meaning “Renaissance VM”), and proved near linear scaling to 1024 cores, but RVM is a VM for Squeak and earlier versions of Pharo, not IBM Smalltalk (the source is available, on GitHub I believe).

https://github.com/smarr/RoarVM I wouldn't say it is IBM, instead that it is David Ungar work (of Self and a few other things)... Has probably ties to the Jikes RVM as well.

Arca Noae (meaning “New Box”), the company that released v.5.0 in June, was set up because too many big customers can’t migrate crucial apps from OS/2 to anything else.  The new version looks more modern, borrowing icons and other things from Linux, mainly KDE.  It can run a fair number of Win32 apps, and supports virtually all modern hardware, scaling to 128 threads and 16GB RAM, though it’s still 32 bit in most senses.

As you can imagine, given the base requirements are a Pentium Pro with 64MB RAM, on an average laptop today it flies.

I'm not nostalgic, but the object model and how it was handling versionning was cool. Anybody remember Taligent? Thierry

Andrew

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*From: *Richard Sargent <mailto:rsargent@5x5.on.ca> *Sent: *Monday, November 6, 2017 11:55 AM *To: *'Any question about pharo is welcome' <mailto:pharo-users@lists.pharo.org> *Subject: *Re: [Pharo-users] perspective request for those earning alivingfromSmalltalk

Andrew,

I worked with OS/2 in the early 90s and really liked it; I adopted it for my personal use as well. I really enjoyed reading the details you provided earlier.

I have a hypothesis that when IBM tried to sell OS/2 (Warp) via a retail channel that it "hurt". A company whose DNA was channel sales would find dealing with retail issues to be entirely different from everything they knew. So, I speculate that there were enough people to felt (and argued) that OS/2 wasn't "worth it".

Any thoughts you would care to share on that supposition would be appreciated.

*From:*Pharo-users [mailto:pharo-users-bounces@lists.pharo.org] *On Behalf Of *Andrew Glynn *Sent:* November 6, 2017 04:18 *To:* Any question about pharo is welcome *Subject:* Re: [Pharo-users] perspective request for those earning a livingfromSmalltalk

Thank you.  I will see if I can get to it today or tomorrow.

Andrew

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*From: *Davorin Rusevljan <mailto:davorin.rusevljan@gmail.com> *Sent: *Monday, November 6, 2017 4:17 AM *To: *Any question about pharo is welcome <mailto:pharo-users@lists.pharo.org> *Subject: *Re: [Pharo-users] perspective request for those earning a livingfromSmalltalk

On Sat, Oct 28, 2017 at 7:59 PM, Andrew Glynn <aglynn42@gmail.com <mailto:aglynn42@gmail.com>> wrote:

Your history is accurate, but there’s a few things I’d  like to add, due to having been employed by IBM at exactly that period working specifically on VisualAge, not only for Smalltalk, but for Java, C++ and Cobol as well.  (my NDA’s finally having expired also helps 😉).  It’s not a correction or contradiction, but a complement to your description, providing a relevant but different perspective.

Andrew,

please find a way to write an article or blog post on this subject. It is priceless.

davorin