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From: knight@mrco.carleton.ca (Alan Knight)
Subject: Re: Smalltalk is no good for shrink/wrap
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References: <knight.797553330@tina.mrco.carleton.ca> <797633424marten.marten@feki.toppoint.de> <knight.797706599@tina.mrco.carleton.ca> <797761951marten.marten@feki.toppoint.de>
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 1995 04:18:15 GMT
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In <797761951marten.marten@feki.toppoint.de> marten@feki.toppoint.de (Marten Feldtmann) writes:

> Hmm, what I mean: The standard Smalltalk (no PARTS, no VisualWorks)
>systems are technically improved -- without any question, but the
>content of the image remained unchanged for years.

There is no standard Smalltalk without VisualWorks. In other dialects,
people sometimes prefer a plain Smalltalk so that they can use
third-party tools rather than what the vendor provides.

> All the vendors tell me: Yes, you've to spend 10 times more money than
>for a C++ system, but your productivity is so much better that it's
>worth the money. The price may not be a problem for a Fortune-1000
>company, but for small developer companies this makes a difference.

> The Smalltalk-vendors can afford this policy because they seem to
>concentrate more and more on these big companies, but perhaps this is
>only a temporary success and in the future the market (and technical)
>power of C/C++ will set the standards Smalltalk has to follow.

So the problem is really that Smalltalk vendors are mostly aiming at
the high-end market which is hard for small developers. This I can
agree with, but saying that the products for doing something are
expensive is not at all the same as saying that they don't exist. In
fact, as the Smalltalk market increases in size, we're starting to see
third parties fillin these gaps. There are a number of inexpensive
source management systems for Digitalk (which has traditionally
captured the low-end market) and numerous other tools are emerging.

-- 
 Alan Knight                | The Object People
 knight@acm.org             | Smalltalk and OO Training and Consulting
 alan_knight@mindlink.bc.ca | 509-885 Meadowlands Dr.
 +1 613 225 8812            | Ottawa, Canada, K2C 3N2
