2 ms·

To me that reads like gibberish. Common Lisp is used in large-scale commercial and industrial applications, why isn't it "as popular as" Java? Pharo and other

by cess11 3y ago

To me that reads like gibberish. Common Lisp is used in large-scale commercial and industrial applications, why isn't it "as popular as" Java? Pharo and other Smalltalks are used in ERP and similar systems. It's attractive if your business requirements change a lot and you either don't want or can't afford to employ a legion of Java developers. You could write to https://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/main/products/visualworks/ https://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/main/products/visualworks/ and ask why those logos are at the bottom of that page, now that Smalltalk isn't as popular as it would be if it was any good. As a CTO I don't really care whether a programming language and toolchain "sells today" or whether it is "competitive" in some general, presumably universal, sense. I want tooling that fits the problem domain really well, and sometimes niche tools outperform general tools by a large margin for certain problems. They might require fewer developers, allow faster development or better scaling than e.g. Java.

igouy 3y ago
> To me that reads like gibberish. Perhaps you could be more charitable in your reading. > Common Lisp is used in large-scale commercial and industrial applications, why isn't it "as popular as" Java? Because those large-scale commercial and industrial Smalltalk applications are mid-1990s business-critical legacy systems! "Over six months in 1996, Smalltalk’s place in the market changed from the enterprise darling COBOL replacement to yet another disappointing tool with a long tail of deployed applications that needed to be maintained. … the commercial Smalltalk vendors were unable to counter the Java hype cycle and development of new Smalltalk-based enterprise applications stopped. " https://wirfs-brock.com/allen/posts/914 https://wirfs-brock.com/allen/posts/914
- cess11 3y ago
  No, I don't think I can. You're answering a question I didn't ask, and quotes an article of dubious relevance.

by cess11 3y ago

igouy 3y ago

> To me that reads like gibberish. Perhaps you could be more charitable in your reading. > Common Lisp is used in large-scale commercial and industrial applications, why isn't it "as popular as" Java? Because those large-scale commercial and industrial Smalltalk applications are mid-1990s business-critical legacy systems! "Over six months in 1996, Smalltalk’s place in the market changed from the enterprise darling COBOL replacement to yet another disappointing tool with a long tail of deployed applications that needed to be maintained. … the commercial Smalltalk vendors were unable to counter the Java hype cycle and development of new Smalltalk-based enterprise applications stopped. " https://wirfs-brock.com/allen/posts/914 https://wirfs-brock.com/allen/posts/914

cess11 3y ago
No, I don't think I can. You're answering a question I didn't ask, and quotes an article of dubious relevance.