In response to this question: Why do you think Smalltalkers are so loyal to their technology?
That's a really interesting observation. Entire herds of programmers (increasing their numbers picking up strays along the way) start with C, migrate to C++, then migrate again to Java, and threaten to abandon that pasture for C#. Perhaps they're not leaving devestated pastures for greener ones, but are instead wrangled from one to another by cowboy consultants, marketers, publishers, and other keepers riding the same wagon (gravy) train.
Meanwhile another group, unimpressed with the direction of the herd, remains in their own valley--having fed there 25 years--have found no greener pasture worth migrating too--wrangled or not. According to them they've already arrived. All the features the herd is chasing (object-orientation, a virtual machine, garbage collection, mature IDE, sane collection classes, and recently dynamic typing) are leading them there anyway. Why not wait for them?
It would be arrogant to think that Smalltalk is the last word in programming languages. But it seems several chapters ahead as other languages slowly add or imitate features Smalltalk's had for a generation. Is it possible that Smalltalk really is ahead of its time, or simply the average programmer (or programming shop, or whatever) is only capable of slowly digesting its features? I'm sure this is how LISP programmers feel about the rest of us.
Another way of looking at it is one group is following their food source (a good survival instinct) while another /may/ be threatened by starvation.
Curiously, Smalltalkers (it seems) demonstrate both traits--they prefer to write Smalltalk but "will write Java for food". What inspires this loyalty?
Previous Topic
