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by Daniel Berger.
Original Post: Not enough Smalltalk programmers?
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At $work, we're spending craploads of cash for a Java app that unifies certain parts of our DSL provisioning process (among other things).
That doesn't sound so bad in theory, but the reality is that we already have a Smalltalk app that does most of what the new app does, and could have easily been modified. So, why wasn't it used instead? When pinned into a corner and beaten with a rubber hose, one of the directors finally confessed that the current app was because it was written in Smalltalk, and Smalltalk developers are too hard to find as compared to Java devs.
Nevermind that they've spent 10 times on the new app than they would have spent just upgrading the current app (we're talking about figures in the millions of dollars here people). Nevermind that the new app is 6 months behind schedule and may have to be delayed until February of next year. Nevermind that their only delivering about 20% of the originally promised functionally in the first release. Nevermind that every single end user I've talked to absolutely *loathes* the new user interface. Nevermind that some of the functionality in the current app will have to be split out into other apps (including an expensive, Tibco-based workflow app).
Look, I like to play language zealot as much as the next guy, but at the end of the day I'm very pragmatic. If you've got an app in language X that works just fine, not to mention a good group of developers with great domain knowledge behind it, you DO NOT rewrite the damn thing. For the kind of money we're shelling out for this pig I could hire at least two new Smalltalk developers for about 20 years, at 6 figures apiece, and upgrade our Cincom to the latest and greatest to boot.
In addition to stupidity, this project has all the markings of vanity and ambition behind it as well.
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