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> Unfortunately, Smalltalk arrived to too much hype before it's (potential) time, and was crippled as production language by it's image based development and d

by Qem 4y ago

> Unfortunately, Smalltalk arrived to too much hype before it's (potential) time, and was crippled as production language by it's image based development and deployment methodology. I was exposed to image based through Pharo, and I've found the idea to be awesome, as it allows very tight feedback loops on development. I see people complaining because it was nontrivial to extricate a finished program from the environment and ship it to customers in a "tamper-proof" opaque form. What puzzles me is why didn't Smalltalk play a bigger role on the ascension of free and open source software, given what was a bug for proprietary shops (hard to ship a opaque binary) is actually a feature for copyleft development (fully inspectable source code together with full development environment included by default). The GNU-Smalltalk development appears to be mostly stale. The torch of free smalltalk is carried most by Squeak and Pharo today.

igouy 4y ago
> … nontrivial to extricate a finished program from the environment and ship it to customers in a "tamper-proof" opaque form. 1) source code management Even ancient Smalltalk-80 provided — "Within each project, a set of changes you make to class descriptions is maintained. … Using a browser view of this set of changes, you can find out what you have been doing. Also, you can use the set of changes to create an external file containing descriptions of the modifications you have made to the system so that you can share your work with other users. … The storage of changes in the Smalltalk-80 system takes two forms: an internal form as a set of changes (actually a set of objects describing changes), and an external form as a file on which your actions are logged while you are working (in the form of executable expressions or expressions that can be filed into a system). … All the information stored in the internal change set is also written onto the changes file." 1984 Smalltalk-80 The Interactive Programming Environment page 461 https://rmod-files.lille.inria.fr/FreeBooks/TheInteractiveProgrammingEnv/TheInteractiveProgrammingEnv.pdf https://rmod-files.lille.inria.fr/FreeBooks/TheInteractivePr... 2) deployment Not all software was shrink-wrap — plenty of high-value enterprise software.
- walnutclosefarm 4y ago
  Smalltalk images were fine for one-person development of single programs. Not really very manageable for teams, and modular development though. Not that these things couldn't be done - we certainly did it at IBM, when SmallTalk was the "thing" there for a while - but it never was very satisfactory. A lot of developers significantly younger than me seem to think that source code control was developed in the the last couple of decades, but in fact we did source code control, modular development, and build pipelines way back in the 70s - mostly with home built tools, but the capabilities began to be built out as soon as source code left card decks for permanent residence and in place modification on rotating storage. And SmallTalk was at best hostile to all those techniques.
  - igouy 4y ago
    > … at best hostile… Strange that you don't mention ENVY/Developer? Method-level source-code version-control and configuration-management implemented for VisualWorks, IBM Smalltalk and Digitalk. "Mastering ENVY/Developer" https://www.google.com/books/edition/Mastering_ENVY_Developer/ld6E19QIMo4C?hl=en&gbpv=1 https://www.google.com/books/edition/Mastering_ENVY_Develope...
Jtsummers 4y ago
You have to consider several factors: 1. Information (and source code) was not so freely available as it became even by the mid-90s, when the internet itself started approaching ubiquity and the Web provided much greater access to information. 2. A large part of the OSS movement has long focused on replacing Unix-like OSes with a FOSS Unix-like OS, which eventually meant GNU/Linux becoming the dominant system people rallied behind. This focus carries with it a language focus, C. 3. Smalltalk in the 80s and through most of the 90s was not easily used freely, and implementing it carries its own costs even if you have people interested in it. Without the common experience of having used it, there is less of a desire to create a free version of it (see 2, the common UNIX and Unix-like experience shared by OSS developers molded and directed the movement, even if not consciously). If the Internet had been more widely available, Smalltalk more widely used and free (or at least much cheaper), then maybe we would have seen a different outcome.
hota_mazi 4y ago
Price is one of the main factors, for sure. But it's not just that. The image was actually a big turn off even back then, even before source control was even a thing. Even today, Smalltalk runtimes (e.g. Pharo) are extremely slow compared to other languages, now imagine how slow Smalltalk was forty years ago... I can tell you, it was very, very slow (I used it on NeXT back then). I'm talking "watch the window draw with your naked eye" slow.
- igouy 4y ago
  > Price is one of the main factors, for sure. March 7, 1988 — "Smalltalk/V 286 is available now and costs $199.95, the company said. Registered users of Digitalk's Smalltalk/V can upgrade for $75 until June 1." https://books.google.com/books?id=CD8EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA25&ots=jiXJNN0ii3&dq=digitalk%20v%2F286&pg=PA25#v=onepage&q=digitalk%20v/286&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=CD8EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA25&ots=... > … I can tell you, it was very, very slow… And of-course you used the Smalltalk profiler to fix that?
  - hota_mazi 4y ago
    That's the developer license. The price to deploy was... close to absurd.
    - igouy 4y ago
      No, $199.95. You must be thinking of different software from a different vendor. Here's the "Smalltalk/V 286" Digitalk License Statement — http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/SmalltalkVTutorial/SmalltalkVTutorial.pdf http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/SmalltalkVTutorial... And by 1991, with Smalltalk/V Windows and Smalltalk/V PM — "Smalltalk/V code is portable between the Windows and the OS/2 versions. And the resulting application carries no runtime charges. All for just $499.95." (Advert on the last page of "The Smalltalk Report") https://rmod-files.lille.inria.fr/Archives/TheSmalltalkReport/PDFS/ST/91_95/SMAL0101.PDF https://rmod-files.lille.inria.fr/Archives/TheSmalltalkRepor...
    - igouy 4y ago

by Qem 4y ago

igouy 4y ago

> … nontrivial to extricate a finished program from the environment and ship it to customers in a "tamper-proof" opaque form. 1) source code management Even ancient Smalltalk-80 provided — "Within each project, a set of changes you make to class descriptions is maintained. … Using a browser view of this set of changes, you can find out what you have been doing. Also, you can use the set of changes to create an external file containing descriptions of the modifications you have made to the system so that you can share your work with other users. … The storage of changes in the Smalltalk-80 system takes two forms: an internal form as a set of changes (actually a set of objects describing changes), and an external form as a file on which your actions are logged while you are working (in the form of executable expressions or expressions that can be filed into a system). … All the information stored in the internal change set is also written onto the changes file." 1984 Smalltalk-80 The Interactive Programming Environment page 461 https://rmod-files.lille.inria.fr/FreeBooks/TheInteractiveProgrammingEnv/TheInteractiveProgrammingEnv.pdf https://rmod-files.lille.inria.fr/FreeBooks/TheInteractivePr... 2) deployment Not all software was shrink-wrap — plenty of high-value enterprise software.

walnutclosefarm 4y ago
Smalltalk images were fine for one-person development of single programs. Not really very manageable for teams, and modular development though. Not that these things couldn't be done - we certainly did it at IBM, when SmallTalk was the "thing" there for a while - but it never was very satisfactory. A lot of developers significantly younger than me seem to think that source code control was developed in the the last couple of decades, but in fact we did source code control, modular development, and build pipelines way back in the 70s - mostly with home built tools, but the capabilities began to be built out as soon as source code left card decks for permanent residence and in place modification on rotating storage. And SmallTalk was at best hostile to all those techniques.
- igouy 4y ago
  > … at best hostile… Strange that you don't mention ENVY/Developer? Method-level source-code version-control and configuration-management implemented for VisualWorks, IBM Smalltalk and Digitalk. "Mastering ENVY/Developer" https://www.google.com/books/edition/Mastering_ENVY_Developer/ld6E19QIMo4C?hl=en&gbpv=1 https://www.google.com/books/edition/Mastering_ENVY_Develope...

Jtsummers 4y ago

You have to consider several factors: 1. Information (and source code) was not so freely available as it became even by the mid-90s, when the internet itself started approaching ubiquity and the Web provided much greater access to information. 2. A large part of the OSS movement has long focused on replacing Unix-like OSes with a FOSS Unix-like OS, which eventually meant GNU/Linux becoming the dominant system people rallied behind. This focus carries with it a language focus, C. 3. Smalltalk in the 80s and through most of the 90s was not easily used freely, and implementing it carries its own costs even if you have people interested in it. Without the common experience of having used it, there is less of a desire to create a free version of it (see 2, the common UNIX and Unix-like experience shared by OSS developers molded and directed the movement, even if not consciously). If the Internet had been more widely available, Smalltalk more widely used and free (or at least much cheaper), then maybe we would have seen a different outcome.

hota_mazi 4y ago

Price is one of the main factors, for sure. But it's not just that. The image was actually a big turn off even back then, even before source control was even a thing. Even today, Smalltalk runtimes (e.g. Pharo) are extremely slow compared to other languages, now imagine how slow Smalltalk was forty years ago... I can tell you, it was very, very slow (I used it on NeXT back then). I'm talking "watch the window draw with your naked eye" slow.

igouy 4y ago
> Price is one of the main factors, for sure. March 7, 1988 — "Smalltalk/V 286 is available now and costs $199.95, the company said. Registered users of Digitalk's Smalltalk/V can upgrade for $75 until June 1." https://books.google.com/books?id=CD8EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA25&ots=jiXJNN0ii3&dq=digitalk%20v%2F286&pg=PA25#v=onepage&q=digitalk%20v/286&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=CD8EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA25&ots=... > … I can tell you, it was very, very slow… And of-course you used the Smalltalk profiler to fix that?
- hota_mazi 4y ago
  That's the developer license. The price to deploy was... close to absurd.
  - igouy 4y ago
    No, $199.95. You must be thinking of different software from a different vendor. Here's the "Smalltalk/V 286" Digitalk License Statement — http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/SmalltalkVTutorial/SmalltalkVTutorial.pdf http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/SmalltalkVTutorial... And by 1991, with Smalltalk/V Windows and Smalltalk/V PM — "Smalltalk/V code is portable between the Windows and the OS/2 versions. And the resulting application carries no runtime charges. All for just $499.95." (Advert on the last page of "The Smalltalk Report") https://rmod-files.lille.inria.fr/Archives/TheSmalltalkReport/PDFS/ST/91_95/SMAL0101.PDF https://rmod-files.lille.inria.fr/Archives/TheSmalltalkRepor...
  - igouy 4y ago