smalltalk vs visual basic

Having done an OO design walkthrough and shown a working prototype in
Dolphin (Go Smalltalk) and now it's time to pick a production
language. We're a conservative VB shop and I want to win them over and
triple our staff productivity.

I've worked in Smalltalk a half decade and know the productivity gains
, but need some industry whitepapers that state it is X times as
productive as VB.

Also need case-studies or books showing it's as easy to learn as VB --
dolphin tutorial is helpful here but looking for more, for example
there are shelves of books like "weekend crash course in VB", "21 days
to VB mastery", etc. Nothing like that for Smalltalk, which creates
the impression it's a hard language.

-Alan

Hi Alan,

[hidden email] (Alan Wostenberg) wrote in message news:<[hidden email]>...
> Also need case-studies or books showing it's as easy to learn as VB --
> dolphin tutorial is helpful here but looking for more, for example
> there are shelves of books like "weekend crash course in VB", "21 days
> to VB mastery", etc. Nothing like that for Smalltalk, which creates
> the impression it's a hard language.
>
> -Alan

My book is aiming to address that - should be out by end November
(nice xmas present ;-))

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201737930/qid=1000974580/ref=sr_11_0_1/104-1169685-3399941

Ted

On 27 Sep 2001 16:50:45 -0700, [hidden email] (Alan Wostenberg)
wrote:

It is a challenge trying to explain Smalltalk to a VBer who has no
concepts of OOP development and getting puzzled stares when you tell
them everything is an object including numbers.But it should not be
hard for them to realize how much more elegant it is. The biggest
challenge is dealing with creating GUI. I am sure you have seen how
different it is.

Fortunately Dolphin helps solve half the battle by being Windows based
and conforms to the Windows look and feel as well as much of the
programmatic interface to Windows.  

However since you must educate VBers the accepted way of programming
in Smalltalk and OOP I would recommend the following 3 books (all
available at www.bn.com or www.amazon.com)

Smalltalk 80 : The Language
by Adele Goldberg (Preface), David Robson (Preface) (Paperback - June
1989)
 
Smalltalk With Style
by Suzanne Skublics, et al (Paperback)
 
Smalltalk, Objects, and Design
by Chamond Liu (Paperback - April 2000)

This way you can capture the overall picture on how and why Smalltalk
development is superior. Of course you can bring up patterns and
refactoring but then you may lose them before you get started.

I have not seen Ted's book (which is Dolphin specific). However there
is a thread here called Dolphin Book started on 6/18/2001 with the
TOC.

On 28 Sep 2001 07:01:58 -0700, [hidden email] (Ted Bracht) wrote:

>
>My book is aiming to address that - should be out by end November
>(nice xmas present ;-))
>
>http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201737930/qid=1000974580/ref=sr_11_0_1/104-1169685-3399941
>

Ted

Did your book just grow by another 100 or so pages?

Costas

see
http://www.lineaengineering.com/Resources/Productivity_/productivity_.html
for comparison of several languages.

"Alan Wostenberg" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...

Costas,

> However since you must educate VBers the accepted way of programming
> in Smalltalk and OOP I would recommend the following 3 books (all
> available at www.bn.com or www.amazon.com)
>
> Smalltalk 80 : The Language
> by Adele Goldberg (Preface), David Robson (Preface) (Paperback - June
> 1989)

I agree that Purple Book belongs on the list, but, I'd suggest having folks
wait until they get comfortable with Smalltalk - prior to that, I don't
think they'd get much out of it.  Do you have experience to the contrary?
One of THE<g> Byte magazine articles does a nice job of describing the
syntax (using colored blocks IIRC).

Have a good one,

Bill

--
Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
[hidden email]

On Fri, 28 Sep 2001 16:26:54 -0400, "Bill Schwab"
<[hidden email]> wrote:

Yes I do have experience to the contrary. It does a very good job of
introducing a programmer to this different way of thinking and works
its way up to how to work with classes. It's probably better than any
other book on the topic.

However it understandably falls short when it comes to GUI
development. It mostly discusses drawing graphics. But it is the
equivalent of K&R of C. Its a must have.

I think a good Smalltalk intor book would be the Purple Book minus the
GUI chapters but add Dolphin's development environment in its place.

The article in question is August 1981, pg 36, The Smalltalk-80 System
by The Xerox Learning Research Group. The whole issue has great
articles on Smalltalk (and old timer ads including Microsoft selling
add in cards for Apple computer to run CPM/80. )

FWIW, I agree with Costas. I think the Purple/Blue books are very good at
teaching the principles of Smalltalk and also a pretty good intro to OO in
general.

http://www.object-arts.com/wiki/html/Dolphin/Smalltalk80TheLanguage.htm

I'd also agree on Smalltalk With Style:

http://www.object-arts.com/wiki/html/Dolphin/SmalltalkWithStyle.htm

and suggest reading Beck's Best Practise patterns before starting on a live
project.

http://www.object-arts.com/wiki/html/Dolphin/SmalltalkBestPracticePatterns.h
tm

Remember, if you  have comments on these, and other books, it would be a
good idea to add them to the above Wiki pages for future reference.

Best Regards

Andy Bower
Dolphin Support
http://www.object-arts.com/Support.htm

Not all Addictions are Bad for you
http://www.object-arts.com/Addiction.htm

"Costas Menico" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]... folks

"Donald MacQueen" <[hidden email]> wrote in message news:<9p2jkg$3nq$[hidden email]>...
> see
> http://www.lineaengineering.com/Resources/Productivity_/productivity_.html
> for comparison of several languages.

Thanks for the pointer. The refresher on function points is particularly useful.

-Alan

[hidden email] (Ted Bracht) wrote in message news:<[hidden email]>...
> > there are shelves of books like "weekend crash course in VB", "21 days
> > to VB mastery", etc. Nothing like that for Smalltalk, which creates
> > the impression it's a hard language.
> My book is aiming to address that - should be out by end November
> (nice xmas present ;-))
>
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201737930/qid=1000974580/ref=sr_11_0_1/104-1169685-3399941

Thanks, Ted, Carlos. I've pretty much hit a wall - "We agree Smalltalk
is far more productive. But VB is our team standard, and we don't want
an orphaned Smalltalk system, therefore you must sacrifice personal
productivity for the sake of team coverage" Oh dear.

-Alan

On 29 Sep 2001 13:56:29 -0700, [hidden email] (Alan Wostenberg)
wrote:

It's tough fighting the VB throngs and the fear factor... Maybe you
can develop small utility apps for your own use. When a VBer wants to
use them, make him beg <g>

On 27 Sep 2001 16:50:45 -0700, [hidden email] (Alan Wostenberg) wrote:
> Having done an OO design walkthrough and shown a working prototype in
> Dolphin (Go Smalltalk) and now it's time to pick a production
> language. We're a conservative VB shop and I want to win them over and
> triple our staff productivity.


[snip]

>
> Also need case-studies or books showing it's as easy to learn as VB --
> dolphin tutorial is helpful here but looking for more, for example
> there are shelves of books like "weekend crash course in VB", "21 days
> to VB mastery", etc. Nothing like that for Smalltalk, which creates
> the impression it's a hard language.

Well, I don't know of a case study that shows a comparison against VB, but
the site and pages at
 
     http://www.whysmalltalk.com/smalltalkvsworld.htm

have quite a few.   There are success stories at

    http://www.stic.org/news.ez?viewLink=8&Form.sess_id=365489&Form.sess_key=1001852505

and at

    http://www.cincom.com/en/profiles/index.asp

There's Professor Ralph Johnson's page at

    http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/users/johnson/smalltalk/

and its links, particularly from Smalltalk consultants.  There's the Dolphin Smalltalk white paper
at

    http://www.object-arts.com/DolphinWhitePaper.htm

and there's Monty Kamath's writings on this subject at

    http://www.goodstart.com/whoswho.shtml
   
IMO, you need to be careful that folks don't apply to Smalltalk, or for that
matter, any new language, a set of criteria they don't or didn't even apply
to the programming language they currently use.   Often, companies and
managers really believe that one programming language is just like another,
be it Smalltalk, Visual Basic, or COBOL, and they manage it like it is, and
their programmers write it like it is.  It is perfectly possible, as much of a
travesty as it is, to write Smalltalk code that, frankly, looks like it were
VB code or COBOL.  Not surprisingly, if that's done, you won't see the
productivity gains some people support.  A lot of what's good about
Smalltalk is just what's best about programming practice anywhere.
It's just that in Smalltalk much of the work needed to practice well
is almost effortless, because of tools and structure, and the community.

Consider, for instance, the hurdle -- and there certainly is one -- to
learn MVP in Dolphin.  Without seeing or even experiencing how
easy it is to adapt MVP triads to different Viewers or Models,
it's tough to understand why one must go through what seem
these arbitrary steps.  This is especially true if one is not familiar
with the whole matter of patterns and their application.

Similarly, IMO, SUnit and its testing framework is one of the
most important things to come to Smalltalk in the past couple
of years, the other being the Refactoring Browser with which
it is often bundled.  But why that should be the case is hard
for a lot of programmers to see.  Many programmers treat
systematic testing in the same way they treat reasoning about
their programs using logic in the manner advocated by
Betrand Meyer, among others

    http://www.eiffel.com/doc/manuals/technology/oosc/page.html

Lastly, the idea of learning VB or any other serious OO methodology
in "21 days" is ludicrous.   Now, it is true that "21 days" is probably
too long to learn the essentials of something like HTML but even
Professor Johnson, cited above, who feels Smalltalk and its design
methodology can be taught very quickly, does it in an immersion-like
boot camp for a few months.

Oh, and BTW

    http://www.goodstart.com/recruiters.shtml

provides a listing of recruiters who claim they provide Smalltalk consultants
and staffers.  The canonical recruiter seems to be Precision Systems, but
I don't have any direct experience with them yet.  Also check out the
consultants at

     http://www.smalltalk.org/

and

     http://www.scguild.org/cgi-bin/keyword.exe?keywords=Smalltalk&scg=on         

Hope this helps,

  --jtg

> Thanks, Ted, Carlos. I've pretty much hit a wall - "We agree Smalltalk
> is far more productive. But VB is our team standard, and we don't want
> an orphaned Smalltalk system, therefore you must sacrifice personal
> productivity for the sake of team coverage" Oh dear.

I suppose the only _minor_ difference between Smalltak (or any other OO
language) and VB is that VB is not OO - unless you count copy/paste as a
legitimate means of inheritance. <G>

BTW I am mainly a Delphi developer, which does support full OO, but I am
researching using Smalltalk for some articles I am writing. I really like
the MVP way of doing things and am trying to introduce the concept to Delphi
programmers.

--
Joanna Carter
Remove .Hat to reply

"Jan Theodore Galkowski" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:1103_1001858614@gawkytorus...

> Lastly, the idea of learning VB or any other serious OO methodology

ROTFL - VB a serious OO methodology? help, I'm near to collapse!!!

--
Joanna Carter
Remove .Hat to reply

"Costas Menico" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...
> It's tough fighting the VB throngs and the fear factor... Maybe you
> can develop small utility apps for your own use. When a VBer wants to
> use them, make him beg <g>

That's what I've been doing too.  The main app I'm responsible for is
written in VB (it's OK - when I die I'll have already spent my allotted time
in purgatory :-), but all the ancillary "utility" apps I've thrown together
are done with Dolphin Smalltalk.  So far I've managed to blow the minds of
several VB programmers.  I've been told, multiple times, that the interface
they're being shown *can not possibly* exist!  Then I pull up Dolphin and
show *that* to them, and they walk away mumbling...  :-)
--
Bob Jarvis

Bob,

> > It's tough fighting the VB throngs and the fear factor... Maybe you
> > can develop small utility apps for your own use. When a VBer wants to
> > use them, make him beg <g>
>
> That's what I've been doing too.  The main app I'm responsible for is
> written in VB (it's OK - when I die I'll have already spent my allotted
time
> in purgatory :-), but all the ancillary "utility" apps I've thrown
together
> are done with Dolphin Smalltalk.  So far I've managed to blow the minds of
> several VB programmers.  I've been told, multiple times, that the
interface
> they're being shown *can not possibly* exist!  Then I pull up Dolphin and
> show *that* to them, and they walk away mumbling...  :-)

What did you create that "couldn't possibly exist" in their minds?

Happy Smalltalking!

Bill

--
Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
[hidden email]

"Bill Schwab" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:3bbff4e2@tobjects....
> What did you create that "couldn't possibly exist" in their minds?

I know this is going to sound a bit crazy, but it's just a browser style
interface with multiple user-resizeable panes separated by splitters.  It's
nothing new or exciting - but I'm talking about a bunch of VB programmers
who think that splitters are wild and wooly weirdness.  The splitter control
they've been using only allows *one* splitter on a form - can't have two or
your CPU melts, or something.  Don't ask me.  So seeing multiple splitters
in both horizontal and vertical directions are more than they can conceive
of, I guess.
--
Bob Jarvis

Bob,

> > What did you create that "couldn't possibly exist" in their minds?
>
> I know this is going to sound a bit crazy, but it's just a browser style
> interface with multiple user-resizeable panes separated by splitters.
It's
> nothing new or exciting - but I'm talking about a bunch of VB programmers
> who think that splitters are wild and wooly weirdness.  The splitter
control
> they've been using only allows *one* splitter on a form - can't have two
or
> your CPU melts, or something.  Don't ask me.  So seeing multiple splitters
> in both horizontal and vertical directions are more than they can conceive
> of, I guess.

Sadly, I'm not surprised.

Thanks!

Bill

--
Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
[hidden email]

Joanna Carter wrote:
>
> "Jan Theodore Galkowski" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
> news:1103_1001858614@gawkytorus...
>
> > Lastly, the idea of learning VB or any other serious OO methodology
>
> ROTFL - VB a serious OO methodology? help, I'm near to collapse!!!

Well, I was just trying to be polite..... (:-(}  

--
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Jan Theodore Galkowski                    [hidden email]
 The Smalltalk Idiom                            
[hidden email]      
*********************************************************************
             "Smalltalk?  Yes, it's really that slick."
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Want to know more?  Check out
           http://www.dnsmith.com/SmallFAQ/
           http://www.object-arts.com/DolphinWhitePaper.htm
           http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/users/johnson/smalltalk/ 
*********************************************************************

Jan Theodore Galkowski <[hidden email]> wrote in message news:<[hidden email]>...
The VB Gang here pride themselves in writing quick & dirty thow-away
utilities. So the "OO is serious" message of reuse is not heard. "we
are not Baan development" was the chorus of IT VB guys when I lapsed
into objectSpeak.

Perhaps this is why there are a million VB'ers -- sure there's
snakeoil there (can one master *any* craft in 21 days?) but the very
fact these books exist lower entry-barrier to VB compared to
Smalltalk.

This fisherman came from a C++/Java world, assumed what appeals to
them ("serious OO") appeals to VB'ers. Wrong. Gotta bait the hook with
something appealing to those who buy these bestsellers "master X in 21
days".

-Alann
Fisher of men