Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
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From: aland@servio.slc.com (Alan Darlington)
Subject: Re: Is Smalltalk a deadend ?
Message-ID: <1996Jan8.204707.24409@slc.com>
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Organization: GemStone Systems, Inc., Beaverton OR, USA
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Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 20:47:07 GMT
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vlad@gramercy.ios.com (Vlastimil Adamovsky (vlad)) writes:
<snip>
> Don't be so happy abou Java. The free stuff will fight  back later.
> First version of Digitalk Smalltalk was $99 in 1986. Almost free.
> Where are those prices now?

Perhaps these low prices are also the reason that Digitalk is gone
now.  Smalltalk implementations are not cheap!  :-)

Even if vendors were to give away Smalltalk products, we would still
never have the number of programmers (and sales) that C, C++, and
Visual Basic do (IMHO, of course).

Vendors are caught in a nasty trap - a complicated product with high
development and maintenance costs on one hand (especially with multiple
platforms - GemStone is in the same bind :-), and a limited market on
the other hand.  They also have to put lots of money into marketing if
they want to compete effectively against other products.

Combine this with low prices, and a vendor will not be around very
long (with the possible exception of IBM, which seems to be able to
loose money forever... :-).

  Alan
    (standard disclaimer)
