This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz
by James Robertson.
Original Post: Too much hacking?
Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants
Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/rssBlogView.xml
Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general.
The main reason most programmers dislike Smalltalk is *because of* the dynamic nature of the environment. If you hack away at your environment all the time, not only do you not get any work done (see "Macdinking" in the Jargon File), you end up shipping the workbench to the customer because your app won't run otherwise. Java IDEs produce code that can be run with a standard JVM.
Hmm. I guess BottomFeeder doesn't exist then. Separating tools from application is not as hard as the commentator makes it out to be. What his argument boils down to is this: "Protect me from myself, because I am not responsible enough to deal with power tools".
As to this:
It's not a matter of ignorance. Basically every professional programmer knows Smalltalk, from reading Design Patterns if nothing else, and quite rationally chooses not to use it. Making a prettier GUI isn't going to change that. We're not idiots, and we're not shallow, and the pompous attitude that we are makes us treat you with contempt. We chose the best tool for the job, and it wasn't Smalltalk.
Seriously, you're going to have to wait for me to get off the floor, where I'm suffering from a serious laughing fit.... Ok. I've traveled extensively, and attended a number of trade conferences over the years. The best you could say is that most programmers have heard of Smalltalk. Most of them couldn't identify code as Smalltalk code if their lives depended on it - not because they are stupid, or uninterested - simply because they haven't encountered it. It's possible that Lisp is less well known, but not by a lot.
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