Why hasn't Smalltalk been wildly accepted?

Hi All,

I'm VERY new to Smalltalk and I'm currently cherishing my first impressions of Squeak (because they are informative not because they are positive) and further I am paid to write Java at work. With that out of the way I'd like to agree with Keith Hodges here.

"Its all down to marketing marketing and more marketing."

Very true. It's something I've observed many brilliant programmers utterly fail to grasp.

For those of you who fail likewise this try this exercise: Imagine your first experience of something new. Imagine you can't stand the smell of it. You have such a visceral response to it that you really don't want to consider any other worthy attributes of it. The only thing that can occupy your mind is that it stinks and you want to throw up and please can someone just get it away from you.

Now imagine something that has not been expertly marketed and designed (though not necessarily commercially marketed and designed). To the vast majority of people (perhaps not people like you and perhaps not rightly) this new thing smells just like the thing you imagined. Until that marketing happens (either "virally" through personal recommendation or through more traditional means) that thing will stink for anyone else who goes near it.

I hope this metaphor isn't too way out but for me it captures the problem with Squeak (and other good technical things that have not had their due attention in the world). I know squeak isn't Smalltalk but I ultimately tried Squeak because I wanted to teach my kids programming and learn a nice language myself. So far so good but I decided to carefully capture some of my initial impressions. Squeak definitely lacks any kind of capable graphic design or usability sense. It's not a criticism because of course I can try to help fix it etc etc. But it is intended to serve as an explanation to those who just can't imagine why others wouldn't fall instantly in love with it.

I've lumped visual design and marketing together in this discussion which is usually an oversimplification, but I think it contrasts with the purist engineering aspect.

The name "Smalltalk" also smells by the way. Java used to smell a bit because it sounds kinda funky and unprofessional on first hearing to a middle manager, but over time this reaction has been marketed away. "Smalltalk" sounds to those folk like something feeble, uncapable. It can be overcome but only with attention paid to promotion.

Marketing forms preconceptions and "prejudices". Lack of marketing makes things seem suspect and unworthy in comparison to those things that get good press (however unworthily).

I do intend to follow advice I've received from professional Smalltalk developers and get Cincom's IDE but I don't think that's going to be part of my project to teach my kids to program.


Feedback encouraged.

Regards,

Chris.

--
Chris Mountford

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is." -- Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut

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you are right!

BTW did you try http://smallwiki.unibe.ch/Botsinc for your kids and  
also Plop (but that this is really for the total fun).
You should have a look at Dolphin this is even slicker :)

Stef

On 14 août 06, at 07:46, christo wrote:


You should have a look at Dolphin this is even slicker :)


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On Mon, 14 Aug 2006 01:10:55 -0700, stéphane ducasse  
<[hidden email]> wrote:

> you are right!
>
> BTW did you try http://smallwiki.unibe.ch/Botsinc for your kids and also  
> Plop (but that this is really for the total fun).
> You should have a look at Dolphin this is even slicker :)

What makes Dolphin slicker? (I've used it, but not much.)
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- code quality,
- general feel,
- the fact that you can deliver dll of 256 k
- consistent widget set

Stef

On 14 août 06, at 10:33, Blake wrote:

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On Fri, 11 Aug 2006 02:20:08 -0700, Klaus D. Witzel  
<[hidden email]> wrote:

That's a very interesting idea, Klaus. I'll check it out!
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Keith Hodges wrote:
> Its all down to marketing marketing and more marketing.

christo wrote:
> Very true. It's something I've observed many brilliant programmers
> utterly fail to grasp.

I agree completely.  Also, when programmers turn to "marketing" they
tend to speak of things like "dynamic languages are easier to program"
and "smalltalk is the best object-oriented language" and "smalltalk
invented OO."

However, to really make Smalltalk take off requires an attention to
the "middle manager" and the "corporate IT person."

To my mind, one problem with Smalltalk - and with LISP and FORTH, by
the way - is the befuddlement when someone asks "Yes, but I want a
standalone executable, not a new environment." (I might add that all
three languages are *tops* for me....)

Here are "selling points" I would suggest:

* Rapid prototyping: "I can produce an example of what you want in
record time."

* Rapid programming: "The time to create a working program is much
less than anything else."

* Time-honored and tested: "Smalltalk is not a new technology; it has
decades of knowledge embedded in it."

* Rapid debugging: "Debugging can happen almost in realtime."

I might add here that I can remember an ad for Smalltalk which
described the speed of the Smalltalk team in a programming
competition.  Need I say it - the Smalltalk team finished the project
first (I don't know if they received first place).

> The name "Smalltalk" also smells by the way. Java used to smell a bit
> because it sounds kinda funky and unprofessional on first hearing to a
> middle manager, but over time this reaction has been marketed away.
> "Smalltalk" sounds to those folk like something feeble, uncapable. It
> can be overcome but only with attention paid to promotion.

I disagree on both counts.  Java sounds (to me) warm, comfortable,
known (with its association with coffee). The feel of "Smalltalk" is
harder to pin down given its age - for me, it conjures up the image of
a multicolored hot-air balloon and an island in a sea :-)

PS: I do remain a "newbie" myself, though...
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David Douthitt wrote:
> To my mind, one problem with Smalltalk - and with LISP and FORTH, by the
> way - is the befuddlement when someone asks "Yes, but I want a
> standalone executable, not a new environment." (I might add that all
> three languages are *tops* for me....)

For comparisons sake - it is also interesting to note the traffic in
the Usenet newsgroups.  My reader now posits the following numbers of
unread messages in these groups (as well as Ruby for comparison):

comp.lang.ruby:       5707
comp.lang.forth:       971
comp.lang.lisp:        599
comp.lang.smalltalk:    56

Perhaps Smalltalk could use some "developer marketing" ("Use
Smalltalk! It's great!") as well as IT Manager marketing....

What happened to the commercial interests?  I don't see any ads in
Wired or ACM's Queue for Smalltalk (or LISP or FORTH for that matter...)

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Thanks all for the feedback.

I think marketing tends to focus on very simple positive aspects. Something like "it's just better" will usually suffice. It's precisely the thing that is very difficult to argue in detail about and it has an unambiguous emotional impact.

Getting into language comparisons is often beside the point since people are making an emotional reaction and then perhaps rationalising things post hoc (justifying by finding reasons for their emotional choices). Not everyone does this but I suspect a large number of people do.

Look at Macintosh. When the thing was first released it had no hard drive, no colour, no software and it was expensive. Apple's marketing was "it's a macintosh". That was enough! It wasn't marketed as a computer. It's a whole new thing for which there is no comparison. Many sober comparisons of Mac against alternatives didn't fall in favour of Mac. The formula is working. People love their macs! By the way I'm not suggesting they aren't great machines in their own right.

Thanks for the pointers about Botsinc, Blake and Dolphin, Stéphane I'll check them out.

Regards,

--
Chris Mountford

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is." -- Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut

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It doesn't help that blurbs like the following appear.  this is from the ACM TechNews for Aug 14, 2006 in the article "5 That Almost Made the List of Greatest Software":

"Another close runner up was Smalltalk, a major breakthrough to be sure, but one that has been eclipsed by Java's network-oriented structure that will have much greater staying power as the Internet age progresses."

I guess that it was just easier for the writer to describe Smalltalk as that tired, out-of-date stuff, rather than do a little research and discover that Seaside's continuation passing style is at the forefront of web server development, as described in the new O'Reilly book "Beyond Java".

  --Bert

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> Subject: Re: [Newbies] Why hasn't Smalltalk been wildly accepted?

  It may not be widely accepted, but I definitely think it is *wildly*
accepted!

  (And, looking at the new horizon and the opportunity, this wildly
accepted status seems to be an advantage for being (the forefather of)
widely used platforms in the near future.)

-- Yoshiki
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Yoshiki Ohshima wrote:
>> Subject: Re: [Newbies] Why hasn't Smalltalk been wildly accepted?
>
>   It may not be widely accepted, but I definitely think it is *wildly*
> accepted!


Congratulations! Nobody noticed this before :-)
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