Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
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From: jordan@cruzio.com (Jordan Bortz)
Subject: It aint the *LANGUAGE* Silly!!
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Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 14:20:20 GMT
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I've seen lots of postings about "which language is better", which
"language" was marketed correctly etc...

I think people are missing the trees from the forest here; the
LANGUAGE is not what people are really buying...they are buying an
ENVIRONMENT ... but I saw again that is only part of the purchase.

What the customer is really shopping for is the ability to get the
BEST and most maintainable DELIVERABLE in the shortest amount of TIME.

Therefore, Jordan's Theorem(TM) reads:

1) That language and environment is best which lets the customer
deliver the best and most maintainable DELIVERABLE in the shortest
amount of time.

Let's take an example where the deliverable must run in Small memory
footprint, with ActiveX Widgets, and at High Speed.

This will eradicate many flavors of ST from the choice list,
regardless of the Snappieness of the Syntax or the Quality of the
Debugger...  All of which will be irrelavant if the customer cant get
to the deliverable (s)he wants.

In a similar vein, lets assume there are some OCX/ActiveX controls
that already do most of what the desired application needs to do --
well if all that needs to be done is essentially wire them together
and set properties, something like VisualBasic could get you to quite
an impressive deliverable quickly, while language heavy environments
like Smalltalk add little to nothing to the equation.

I think given the techie nature of Smalltalkers, we tend to focus on
thigs like language, debugger, etc, whereas customers are focused on
ease-of-use, ease-of-hiring employees/consultants, ease of plugging in
3rd party components, and ease of delivery....IE they are looking at
the Whole Picture, not just parts of the picture.

To the extent that Smalltalk can deliver on the "whole promise" of
RAD, I think it has a chance to flourish -- to the extent that
Smalltalk delivers on the language and languishes on the rest of the
picture, I think Smalltalk will be ignored....by the mainstream
anyway.

	Jordan

Jordan Bortz
President 
Object Productions INC

Note that having a "snappy syntax" or a flashy debugger are irrelevant
if 

