Smalltalk jobs

Dice.com has five new Smalltalk positions posted in Atlanta yesterday,
(which might mean one position that five recruiters are trying to
fill) and ten or so in the past thirty days in the rest of the
country. When I see Omaha, NE listed I think of Warren Buffett and
Berkshire Hathaway which makes sense since JPMorgan was using it
presumably for Investment analysis. When you see Arlington Va. its
probably the CIA, NSA or Homeland Security. If you want only
interesting projects stick with Smalltalk :-)

Am 24.01.2012 19:37 schrieb "leonsmith" <[hidden email]>:
>
> Dice.com has five new Smalltalk positions posted in Atlanta yesterday,
> (which might mean one position that five recruiters are trying to
> fill) and ten or so in the past thirty days in the rest of the
> country. When I see Omaha, NE listed I think of Warren Buffett and
> Berkshire Hathaway which makes sense since JPMorgan was using it
> presumably for Investment analysis. When you see Arlington Va. its
> probably the CIA, NSA or Homeland Security. If you want only
> interesting projects stick with Smalltalk :-)

Investment Analysis at JPMorgan is done with "K" programming language on large in memory databases. Smalktalk is mostly neither 64bit nor, because every number has to be an object with 64bit pointer, type info... added, able to work on compressed memory structures, holding millions of billions of data. "K" performs 100.000 queries a second on a terabyte ram database storage, thousands of data changing every second.

Smalktalk - no go!!!

Have fun, Guido Stepken

I would have to see the actual requirements. I worked on a project
where we hooked smalltalk up to a Teradata DBC1012 super computer/dbms
and I've created Smalltalk interfaces to other DBMSs as well.
Remember, its the DBMS that spins the queries. The client usually uses
APPC or some other protocol to fire off the query and then deals with
a returned dataset a row at a time. I'm over-simplifying, but even
NASA uses a similar approach to keep track of Billions of objects. The
most dangerous thing a programmer can do is worry about performance
issues during the design or requirements gathering stages. The guy in
charge of our Data Modeling project at American Airlines actually
banned the "P" word from being uttered. You simply cannot know what to
optimize until you have something to profile. Anything else is
premature. I have a lot of Smalltalk success stories and only
nightmares from when various teams decided to "cache" or something
because of performance issues they "assumed" would happen.

On Jan 24, 10:53 am, Guido Stepken <[hidden email]> wrote:

Sorry to bump but you really hit a raw nerve :-) When I started
helping big companies ( five million customers and up ) with
Smalltalk, we were dealing with a three meg image on a machine that
could only have a ten meg hard drive and no more than 640k of RAM on
windows pre-version 1.0 ! I've heard every argument you can come up
with from the mainframe guys already.

On Jan 24, 10:53 am, Guido Stepken <[hidden email]> wrote:

Am 24.01.2012 20:23 schrieb "leonsmith" <[hidden email][hidden email][hidden email]>:
>
> Sorry to bump but you really hit a raw nerve :-) When I started
> helping big companies ( five million customers and up ) with
> Smalltalk, we were dealing with a three meg image on a machine that
> could only have a ten meg hard drive and no more than 640k of RAM on
> windows pre-version 1.0 ! I've heard every argument you can come up
> with from the mainframe guys already.

Oh yes. I like Smalltalk as "realtime fontend", observing data, blinking, warning, showing datasets. Good, reactive eventmachine. But i really like software like "eagle mode", flying, zooming into endless sets of realtime data, .... no chance for Smalltalk to keep up with as frontend, even after heavy iron and "K" having analyzed billions of datasets.

http://eaglemode.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html

See video, thats realtime on a sloooow dualcore notebook! Without GPU!!!!

Have fun with Smalltalk and Etoys for educational purposes. Thats reality.

Ok, also good for implementing knowlegde, like a airplane constuction bureau in Nottingham does, 120 indian Smalltalkers working there.

Have fun.

Guido Stepken

>
> On Jan 24, 10:53 am, Guido Stepken <[hidden email][hidden email][hidden email]> wrote:
> > Am 24.01.2012 19:37 schrieb "leonsmith" <[hidden email][hidden email][hidden email]>:
> >
> >
> >
> > > Dice.com has five new Smalltalk positions posted in Atlanta yesterday,
> > > (which might mean one position that five recruiters are trying to
> > > fill) and ten or so in the past thirty days in the rest of the
> > > country. When I see Omaha, NE listed I think of Warren Buffett and
> > > Berkshire Hathaway which makes sense since JPMorgan was using it
> > > presumably for Investment analysis. When you see Arlington Va. its
> > > probably the CIA, NSA or Homeland Security. If you want only
> > > interesting projects stick with Smalltalk :-)
> >
> > Investment Analysis at JPMorgan is done with "K" programming language on
> > large in memory databases. Smalktalk is mostly neither 64bit nor, because
> > every number has to be an object with 64bit pointer, type info... added,
> > able to work on compressed memory structures, holding millions of billions
> > of data. "K" performs 100.000 queries a second on a terabyte ram database
> > storage, thousands of data changing every second.
> >
> > Smalktalk - no go!!!
> >
> > Have fun, Guido Stepken

Actually JP Morgan does use Smalltalk for some of it's investment analysis[1], [2]. Apparently the site with the original article is hiding itself behind a paywall these days[3].

Dale

[1] http://gemstonesoup.wordpress.com/2007/10/03/case-study-featuring-jpmorgans-kapital-and-smalltalk/
[2] http://www.esug.org/data/ESUG2004/ValueOfSmalltalk.pdf
[3] http://www.watersonline.com/public/showPage.html?page=468641

----- Original Message -----
| From: "Guido Stepken" <[hidden email]>
| To: [hidden email]
| Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2012 10:53:12 AM
| Subject: Re: [amber-lang] Smalltalk jobs
|
|
|
|
| Am 24.01.2012 19:37 schrieb "leonsmith" < [hidden email] >:
| >
| > Dice.com has five new Smalltalk positions posted in Atlanta
| > yesterday,
| > (which might mean one position that five recruiters are trying to
| > fill) and ten or so in the past thirty days in the rest of the
| > country. When I see Omaha, NE listed I think of Warren Buffett and
| > Berkshire Hathaway which makes sense since JPMorgan was using it
| > presumably for Investment analysis. When you see Arlington Va. its
| > probably the CIA, NSA or Homeland Security. If you want only
| > interesting projects stick with Smalltalk :-)
|
| Investment Analysis at JPMorgan is done with "K" programming language
| on large in memory databases. Smalktalk is mostly neither 64bit nor,
| because every number has to be an object with 64bit pointer, type
| info... added, able to work on compressed memory structures, holding
| millions of billions of data. "K" performs 100.000 queries a second
| on a terabyte ram database storage, thousands of data changing every
| second.
|
| Smalktalk - no go!!!
|
| Have fun, Guido Stepken

Am 24.01.2012 21:11 schrieb "Dale Henrichs" <[hidden email][hidden email][hidden email]>:
>
> Actually JP Morgan does use Smalltalk for some of it's investment analysis[1], [2]. Apparently the site with the original article is hiding itself behind a paywall these days[3].
>
> Dale

I'm sure, JPMorgan analysts are mostly using Excel and Crystal Report ... and, of course PowerPoint! :-)

Have fun!

Guido Stepken

>
> [1] http://gemstonesoup.wordpress.com/2007/10/03/case-study-featuring-jpmorgans-kapital-and-smalltalk/
> [2] http://www.esug.org/data/ESUG2004/ValueOfSmalltalk.pdf
> [3] http://www.watersonline.com/public/showPage.html?page=468641
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> | From: "Guido Stepken" <[hidden email][hidden email][hidden email]>
> | To: [hidden email][hidden email][hidden email]
> | Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2012 10:53:12 AM
> | Subject: Re: [amber-lang] Smalltalk jobs
> |
> |
> |
> |
> | Am 24.01.2012 19:37 schrieb "leonsmith" < [hidden email][hidden email][hidden email] >:
> | >
> | > Dice.com has five new Smalltalk positions posted in Atlanta
> | > yesterday,
> | > (which might mean one position that five recruiters are trying to
> | > fill) and ten or so in the past thirty days in the rest of the
> | > country. When I see Omaha, NE listed I think of Warren Buffett and
> | > Berkshire Hathaway which makes sense since JPMorgan was using it
> | > presumably for Investment analysis. When you see Arlington Va. its
> | > probably the CIA, NSA or Homeland Security. If you want only
> | > interesting projects stick with Smalltalk :-)
> |
> | Investment Analysis at JPMorgan is done with "K" programming language
> | on large in memory databases. Smalktalk is mostly neither 64bit nor,
> | because every number has to be an object with 64bit pointer, type
> | info... added, able to work on compressed memory structures, holding
> | millions of billions of data. "K" performs 100.000 queries a second
> | on a terabyte ram database storage, thousands of data changing every
> | second.
> |
> | Smalktalk - no go!!!
> |
> | Have fun, Guido Stepken

Guido,

I know you enjoy bashing Smalltalk, but Smalltalk is still used for some very serious large business applications ...

25% of the world-wide container traffic in the world is managed using Smalltalk (combination of GemStone/S and Cincom at three major shipping companies). The GemStone/S database is used as the database of record since the RDBMS based system requires 10X the hardware of the GemStone/S based system.

Dale

----- Original Message -----
| From: "Guido Stepken" <[hidden email]>
| To: [hidden email]
| Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2012 12:02:54 PM
| Subject: Re: [amber-lang] Re: Smalltalk jobs
|
|
|
|
| Am 24.01.2012 20:23 schrieb "leonsmith" < leonpetersmith @ gmail.com
| >:
| >
| > Sorry to bump but you really hit a raw nerve :-) When I started
| > helping big companies ( five million customers and up ) with
| > Smalltalk, we were dealing with a three meg image on a machine that
| > could only have a ten meg hard drive and no more than 640k of RAM
| > on
| > windows pre-version 1.0 ! I've heard every argument you can come up
| > with from the mainframe guys already.
|
| Oh yes. I like Smalltalk as "realtime fontend", observing data,
| blinking, warning, showing datasets. Good, reactive eventmachine.
| But i really like software like "eagle mode", flying, zooming into
| endless sets of realtime data, .... no chance for Smalltalk to keep
| up with as frontend, even after heavy iron and "K" having analyzed
| billions of datasets.
|
| http://eaglemode.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html
|
| See video, thats realtime on a sloooow dualcore notebook! Without
| GPU!!!!
|
| Have fun with Smalltalk and Etoys for educational purposes. Thats
| reality.
|
| Ok, also good for implementing knowlegde, like a airplane constuction
| bureau in Nottingham does, 120 indian Smalltalkers working there.
|
| Have fun.
|
| Guido Stepken
|
| >
| > On Jan 24, 10:53 am, Guido Stepken < gstep ...@ googlemail.com >
| > wrote:
| > > Am 24.01.2012 19:37 schrieb "leonsmith" < leonpetersm ...@
| > > gmail.com >:
| > >
| > >
| > >
| > > > Dice.com has five new Smalltalk positions posted in Atlanta
| > > > yesterday,
| > > > (which might mean one position that five recruiters are trying
| > > > to
| > > > fill) and ten or so in the past thirty days in the rest of the
| > > > country. When I see Omaha, NE listed I think of Warren Buffett
| > > > and
| > > > Berkshire Hathaway which makes sense since JPMorgan was using
| > > > it
| > > > presumably for Investment analysis. When you see Arlington Va.
| > > > its
| > > > probably the CIA, NSA or Homeland Security. If you want only
| > > > interesting projects stick with Smalltalk :-)
| > >
| > > Investment Analysis at JPMorgan is done with "K" programming
| > > language on
| > > large in memory databases. Smalktalk is mostly neither 64bit nor,
| > > because
| > > every number has to be an object with 64bit pointer, type info...
| > > added,
| > > able to work on compressed memory structures, holding millions of
| > > billions
| > > of data. "K" performs 100.000 queries a second on a terabyte ram
| > > database
| > > storage, thousands of data changing every second.
| > >
| > > Smalktalk - no go!!!
| > >
| > > Have fun, Guido Stepken

Guido,

You are a troll ... read the available information before resonding ... the fact that you don't do any homework and bash for fun is why I will no longer respond to your posts ...

Enjoy yourself!

Dale

----- Original Message -----
| From: "Guido Stepken" <[hidden email]>
| To: [hidden email]
| Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2012 12:18:16 PM
| Subject: Re: [amber-lang] Smalltalk jobs
|
|
|
|
| Am 24.01.2012 21:11 schrieb "Dale Henrichs" < dhenrich @ vmware.com
| >:
| >
| > Actually JP Morgan does use Smalltalk for some of it's investment
| > analysis[1], [2]. Apparently the site with the original article is
| > hiding itself behind a paywall these days[3].
| >
| > Dale
|
| I'm sure, JPMorgan analysts are mostly using Excel and Crystal Report
| ... and, of course PowerPoint! :-)
|
| Have fun!
|
| Guido Stepken
|
| >
| > [1] http:// gemstonesoup.wordpress.com /2007/10/03/ case - study -
| > featuring - jpmorgans -kapital- and - smalltalk /
| > [2] http:// www.esug.org / data /ESUG2004/ ValueOfSmalltalk.pdf
| > [3] http:// www.watersonline.com / public / showPage.html ? page
| > =468641
| >
| > ----- Original Message -----
| > | From: "Guido Stepken" < gstepken @ googlemail.com >
| > | To: amber -lang@ googlegroups.com
| > | Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2012 10:53:12 AM
| > | Subject: Re: [amber-lang] Smalltalk jobs
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > | Am 24.01.2012 19:37 schrieb "leonsmith" < leonpetersmith @
| > | gmail.com >:
| > | >
| > | > Dice.com has five new Smalltalk positions posted in Atlanta
| > | > yesterday,
| > | > (which might mean one position that five recruiters are trying
| > | > to
| > | > fill) and ten or so in the past thirty days in the rest of the
| > | > country. When I see Omaha, NE listed I think of Warren Buffett
| > | > and
| > | > Berkshire Hathaway which makes sense since JPMorgan was using
| > | > it
| > | > presumably for Investment analysis. When you see Arlington Va.
| > | > its
| > | > probably the CIA, NSA or Homeland Security. If you want only
| > | > interesting projects stick with Smalltalk :-)
| > |
| > | Investment Analysis at JPMorgan is done with "K" programming
| > | language
| > | on large in memory databases. Smalktalk is mostly neither 64bit
| > | nor,
| > | because every number has to be an object with 64bit pointer, type
| > | info... added, able to work on compressed memory structures,
| > | holding
| > | millions of billions of data. "K" performs 100.000 queries a
| > | second
| > | on a terabyte ram database storage, thousands of data changing
| > | every
| > | second.
| > |
| > | Smalktalk - no go!!!
| > |
| > | Have fun, Guido Stepken
| Am 24.01.2012 21:11 schrieb "Dale Henrichs" < [hidden email] >:
|
|
| Actually JP Morgan does use Smalltalk for some of it's investment
| analysis[1], [2]. Apparently the site with the original article is
| hiding itself behind a paywall these days[3].
|
| Dale
|
| [1]
| http://gemstonesoup.wordpress.com/2007/10/03/case-study-featuring-jpmorgans-kapital-and-smalltalk/
| [2] http://www.esug.org/data/ESUG2004/ValueOfSmalltalk.pdf
| [3] http://www.watersonline.com/public/showPage.html?page=468641
|
| ----- Original Message -----
| | From: "Guido Stepken" < [hidden email] >
| | To: [hidden email]
| | Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2012 10:53:12 AM
| | Subject: Re: [amber-lang] Smalltalk jobs
| |
| |
| |
| |
| | Am 24.01.2012 19:37 schrieb "leonsmith" < [hidden email]
| | >:
| | >
| | > Dice.com has five new Smalltalk positions posted in Atlanta
| | > yesterday,
| | > (which might mean one position that five recruiters are trying to
| | > fill) and ten or so in the past thirty days in the rest of the
| | > country. When I see Omaha, NE listed I think of Warren Buffett
| | > and
| | > Berkshire Hathaway which makes sense since JPMorgan was using it
| | > presumably for Investment analysis. When you see Arlington Va.
| | > its
| | > probably the CIA, NSA or Homeland Security. If you want only
| | > interesting projects stick with Smalltalk :-)
| |
| | Investment Analysis at JPMorgan is done with "K" programming
| | language
| | on large in memory databases. Smalktalk is mostly neither 64bit
| | nor,
| | because every number has to be an object with 64bit pointer, type
| | info... added, able to work on compressed memory structures,
| | holding
| | millions of billions of data. "K" performs 100.000 queries a second
| | on a terabyte ram database storage, thousands of data changing
| | every
| | second.
| |
| | Smalktalk - no go!!!
| |
| | Have fun, Guido Stepken
|

All I know is that a team of Smalltalkers including some I worked with
in the past and from the original Parc at Xerox were at JPM for two or
three years.

Smalltalk is not about performance, its about dealing with the very
large complex domains that have very complex inter-relationships. I
also programmed in C, Forth and Assembler and these are your flashy,
fast gamer type languages. I would never choose anything but Smalltalk
if asked to model and implement the whole world :-)

On Jan 24, 12:11 pm, Dale Henrichs <[hidden email]> wrote:

Can we talk about Amber please?

Cheers,
Nico

On Tue, 2012-01-24 at 21:02 +0100, Guido Stepken wrote:

+1

On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 2:26 PM, Nicolas Petton
<[hidden email]> wrote:
> Can we talk about Amber please?
>
> Cheers,
> Nico

On Tue, 2012-01-24 at 12:20 -0800, Dale Henrichs wrote:


> Guido,
>
> You are a troll ... read the available information before
> resonding ... the fact that you don't do any homework and bash for fun
> is why I will no longer respond to your posts ...

Guido,

I'm sorry but I have to agree with Dale here. Off-topic subjects are
fine, but not like this.

Cheers,
Nico

I apologize for my contribution to an off topic conversation. I'm new
here and don't know any of the personalities yet so I don't know who
to pay attention to and who to ignore, but I learn fast :-)

OK, back to Amber. Your approach is to build a Smalltalk runtime VM
out of Javascript and execute it. Did you ever try just translating
the ST code to its JS equivalent and running that under a JS
environment ?

On Jan 24, 12:27 pm, Nicolas Petton <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi!

"OK, back to Amber. Your approach is to build a Smalltalk runtime VM
out of Javascript and execute it. Did you ever try just translating
the ST code to its JS equivalent and running that under a JS
environment ? "

No, Amber is not a "VM in js" - I am curious, why do you think it is?

Amber *compiles* Smalltalk into js, very much like a regular Smalltalk compiles st to bytecodes. BUT... in order to support Smalltalk semantics the generated js is typically a LOT of function calls, so we do currently take a fair hit performance wise. Yes, we have a small machinery for so called speculative inlining, but there is a lot of room for smarter compilation. We should probably peek at what others do in this area.

If you wish to help - the source for the Compiler etc is all there. The parser is in js, but you do not need to mess at that level since we have a proper AST to work with.

regards, Göran

"No, Amber is not a "VM in js" - I am curious, why do you think it
is?"

Because that's what it looks like when I debug the Javascript code at
runtime and step through the code. High level and in JS, yes, but
still a type of interpreter.

That is a good observation and has to do with the fact that we normally need to compile each send into a function call into an Amber specific function that needs to do some stuff to support Smalltalk semantics like dnu, contexts etc etc. But we also do some speculative inlining of common low level stuff like -, + etc. There is lots more smarts we can add.

But it is js code, so it is compiled. :)

-- Sent from my Palm Pre 2, wohoo!

---

On Jan 25, 2012 17:39, leonsmith <[hidden email]> wrote:


"No, Amber is not a "VM in js" - I am curious, why do you think it
is?"

Because that's what it looks like when I debug the Javascript code at
runtime and step through the code. High level and in JS, yes, but
still a type of interpreter.