On Thu, Oct 26, 2017 at 3:40 PM, Paulo R. Dellani <dellani@pobox.com> wrote:
I like your depiction of the situation and arguments, Andrew.
The inherent volatility of the software industry due to its tendency to self disruption, as you pointed out, is fertile ground to all kinds of crap, but we as developers should keep our eyes wide open and look for the pearls and gems that grow here and there, like Pharo Smalltalk.
Of course my "vision", as a Smalltalker is inherently biased, but as you said, when "shit has to work", I think that we have good cards at our hands.
If that is a key requirement, share these with your stakeholders... * GemStone:64 Update and Roadmap https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejtXqJoSrb4&list=PLJ5nSnWzQXi_THfKwhzxFwbXy0... * Running Pharo on the GemStone VM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkvjUXn3tGs&list=PLJ5nSnWzQXi_THfKwhzxFwbXy0... "Develop on Pharo, Deploy on Gemstone" seems to be a growing meme.
So yesterday we had another meeting and I think I could make a good point for Smalltalk, thanks to all your arguments here at the list. But surely the absolute killer argument is that "this shit really works" :-)
As pointed out by several of you, integration is key. For my particular present case, I could successfully integrate the developed tools in the system, a medical imaging processing pipeline,
Juan might be able to advise on the suitability of Smalltalk for image processing... * https://news.squeak.org/2017/05/24/satellogic-hyperspectral-cameras-geometri... * https://www.nature.com/articles/n-12305964 Regarding the reality of Pharo having less libraries than mainstream languages. I am reminded of this interesting perspective... * https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/10/14/in-defense-of-not-invented-here-sy... that reuse is not always an advantage. Certainly FFI provides access to a large selection of pre-made libraries - but it opens applications to memory protection faults and other quirks that make debugging more difficult. As always, its "horses for courses". cheers -ben