3 ms·

We don't know all this. (See my other comment in the thread for a lengthier attempt at explaining.)

by gruseom 15y ago

javajosh 15y ago
Do you mean http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3900047 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3900047 ? I actually disagree strongly with you there. Hackers are eager to find things that work better, regardless of their source. One example that springs to mind is the use, in 3D graphics programs, of an archaic math construct called the 'quaternion'. The quaternion was the loser in a long-ago war with 'vectors', but this did not stop hackers from using the idea with the most value. Another more ready example (as evinced by the frequent posts on HN about it) is Emacs. It's an old editor. And yet it still has it's adherents, and new converts. But I hear nothing about people making anything in smalltalk environments. Nothing. Not even toys. One would think that if the language/environment was so powerful and the software freely available, that we would have seen something built on it. Heck, erlang is pretty esoteric (especially to those who don't hang out around here) but someone built CouchDB on erlang (and then abandoned it, but that's another story :). In summary, I think there might be something wrong with Smalltalk that has nothing to do with economics.
- fractallyte 15y ago
  Then you're obviously not paying attention: http://seaside.st/ http://seaside.st/ http://www.cmsbox.com/en/cms http://www.cmsbox.com/en/cms http://www.languageoflanguages.org/ http://www.languageoflanguages.org/ http://scg.unibe.ch/research/helvetia http://scg.unibe.ch/research/helvetia http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/projects/index.html http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/projects/index.html
  - batista 15y ago
    No, THEY are obviously not producing something that gets enough publicity. Compared with CouchDB (which is not even that famous itself) all those are marginal at best, with the possible exception of Seaside, and then again that's a framework. Where's the famous site built with it, like, say, Facebook was built in PHP and Twitter in Ruby/Rails(Scala), etc?
  - javajosh 15y ago
    You must not have understood my intention: Where are the applications that people use that were written in modern, free Smalltalk?
    - fractallyte 15y ago
      Smalltalk was marginalized by its image-based nature. It's an operating system as much as it is a language, so packaging up a native application to run 'outside' the image requires various widget libraries and runtime structures that haven't yet matured in the free Smalltalks. You'd have to look for enterprisey applications written with Cincom's VisualWorks, or Inception's VA Smalltalk. The web is where it currently excels. Hence the prominence of Seaside, and similar frameworks.
      - javajosh 15y ago
        >Smalltalk was marginalized by its image-based nature. Well there you have it: a non-economic reason it failed.

We don't know all this. (See my other comment in the thread for a lengthier attempt at explaining.)

by gruseom 15y ago

We don't know all this. (See my other comment in the thread for a lengthier attempt at explaining.)

Do you mean http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3900047 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3900047 ? I actually disagree strongly with you there. Hackers are eager to find things that work better, regardless of their source. One example that springs to mind is the use, in 3D graphics programs, of an archaic math construct called the 'quaternion'. The quaternion was the loser in a long-ago war with 'vectors', but this did not stop hackers from using the idea with the most value. Another more ready example (as evinced by the frequent posts on HN about it) is Emacs. It's an old editor. And yet it still has it's adherents, and new converts. But I hear nothing about people making anything in smalltalk environments. Nothing. Not even toys. One would think that if the language/environment was so powerful and the software freely available, that we would have seen something built on it. Heck, erlang is pretty esoteric (especially to those who don't hang out around here) but someone built CouchDB on erlang (and then abandoned it, but that's another story :). In summary, I think there might be something wrong with Smalltalk that has nothing to do with economics.

fractallyte 15y ago
Then you're obviously not paying attention: http://seaside.st/ http://seaside.st/ http://www.cmsbox.com/en/cms http://www.cmsbox.com/en/cms http://www.languageoflanguages.org/ http://www.languageoflanguages.org/ http://scg.unibe.ch/research/helvetia http://scg.unibe.ch/research/helvetia http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/projects/index.html http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/projects/index.html
- batista 15y ago
  No, THEY are obviously not producing something that gets enough publicity. Compared with CouchDB (which is not even that famous itself) all those are marginal at best, with the possible exception of Seaside, and then again that's a framework. Where's the famous site built with it, like, say, Facebook was built in PHP and Twitter in Ruby/Rails(Scala), etc?
- javajosh 15y ago
  You must not have understood my intention: Where are the applications that people use that were written in modern, free Smalltalk?
  - fractallyte 15y ago
    Smalltalk was marginalized by its image-based nature. It's an operating system as much as it is a language, so packaging up a native application to run 'outside' the image requires various widget libraries and runtime structures that haven't yet matured in the free Smalltalks. You'd have to look for enterprisey applications written with Cincom's VisualWorks, or Inception's VA Smalltalk. The web is where it currently excels. Hence the prominence of Seaside, and similar frameworks.
    - javajosh 15y ago
      >Smalltalk was marginalized by its image-based nature. Well there you have it: a non-economic reason it failed.