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Travels with Smalltalk (1995)

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Re: Travels with Smalltalk (1995)

#11

Post by [deleted] »

geocar wrote: post #8
pjmlp wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the major culprints devs that want to get paid, while refusing wholeheartedly to pay in any form for the work of others. We see it all the time here, a forum supposedly for people doing their own business projects. A ShowHN of any commercial tool is followed by endless threads of commercial software is evil and free clones or partial implementations to avoid paying for such tool. So that leaves enterprise shops…

This is definitely a big factor, but when did it occur? A long time ago I purchased Turbo C++, and then Watcom, but as soon as GCC got good enough I never paid for another compiler again. I would love to make a great compiler, but how could I afford to when I'm competing with free?

[deleted]

Re: Travels with Smalltalk (1995)

#12

Post by mistrial9 »

geocar wrote: post #10
zeveb wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing stops the others who are contributing to that consultant’s underlying free software from taking pride in their work. Nothing stops you from spending your bench time improving (or replacing!) that free software with others. Free Software is good for the users of software, which is ultimately good for developers, because ultimately we're all users of software first and developers second.

Mine; yours, and everyones salary is based on the value our contribution brings to our customers needs. If we spend it making software, and we're competing with people working for free, we are simply not going to make as much money as we could be doing something else, so here's what happens: People who love writing software, who are basically willing to work for free, will continue to write software. Some of them are…

> Mine; yours, and everyones salary is based on the value our contribution brings to our customers needs.

this is tragically naive ; the role of business management is to control and reduce price of inputs, every time. If something absolutely vital, essential, mission-critical can be obtained for less and less dollars out, it will be done. This is a prime "function of markets and competition" .. if you are talking about salt or eggs in a subsistance population, things can go well.. in a world-connected, skills-based post-industrial world, it results in exactly what you see .. millions of 20-somethings with more years of college and better health than their parents, struggling to break-even to just survive, etc. etc.

Re: Travels with Smalltalk (1995)

#13

Post by imglorp »

ngcc_hk wrote: post #2

Still relevant today? In 1988, I was briefed by Ibm how they would use Smalltalk with about 10 programmer develop something to ... do not believe them for 1s. What is the business model is then what Microsoft teach the world. It is not technology but the business (the share to the inventor and investor) or later in 1990s (we learn from open sources) the governance and partipation model that rule. Also, it is dynamic…

I know a guy that worked for IBM writing a large bunch of UI in Smalltalk (80?), desktop of course, on OS/2. He was highly supportive of the productivity and environment, but business concerns pushed them in another direction.

Re: Travels with Smalltalk (1995)

#14

Post by blame-troi »

pjmlp wrote: post #7
geocar wrote: post #3

Inside a mildew-covered Tudor barn, and primed with much whiskey, Dave Thomas convinced me that the Open Source Movement was bad for invention and progress: Where it may do good, it also robbed developers of the opportunity to be paid fairly for their work, and that was bad. Once upon a time, you could make a piece of software and sell it for $1m, but now you are competing with someone who would take a little "free s…

I see the major culprints devs that want to get paid, while refusing wholeheartedly to pay in any form for the work of others. We see it all the time here, a forum supposedly for people doing their own business projects. A ShowHN of any commercial tool is followed by endless threads of commercial software is evil and free clones or partial implementations to avoid paying for such tool. So that leaves enterprise shops…

As long as we are too cheap to pay our sibling programmers for their work this will continue. The gig economy isn't helping.

Re: Travels with Smalltalk (1995)

#15

Post by pjmlp »

geocar wrote: post #8
pjmlp wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the major culprints devs that want to get paid, while refusing wholeheartedly to pay in any form for the work of others. We see it all the time here, a forum supposedly for people doing their own business projects. A ShowHN of any commercial tool is followed by endless threads of commercial software is evil and free clones or partial implementations to avoid paying for such tool. So that leaves enterprise shops…

This is definitely a big factor, but when did it occur? A long time ago I purchased Turbo C++, and then Watcom, but as soon as GCC got good enough I never paid for another compiler again. I would love to make a great compiler, but how could I afford to when I'm competing with free?

GCC is a good example.

Since we are talking about Smalltalk here.

We had Energize C++, C++ Builder as C++ RAD tooling, which failed to win any representative market share.

And if it wasn't for Apple sponsoring the initial work in clang, the open source C and C++ tooling would be much worse than what was achieved the last decade.

Re: Travels with Smalltalk (1995)

#16

Post by xfer »

geocar wrote: post #8
pjmlp wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the major culprints devs that want to get paid, while refusing wholeheartedly to pay in any form for the work of others. We see it all the time here, a forum supposedly for people doing their own business projects. A ShowHN of any commercial tool is followed by endless threads of commercial software is evil and free clones or partial implementations to avoid paying for such tool. So that leaves enterprise shops…

This is definitely a big factor, but when did it occur? A long time ago I purchased Turbo C++, and then Watcom, but as soon as GCC got good enough I never paid for another compiler again. I would love to make a great compiler, but how could I afford to when I'm competing with free?

Well, look at lispworks for example, that compiler costs $1500 for a hobbyist edition, i can't afford to pay for that. Maybe if you price your product reasonably for end users you can still sell software(including compilers/devtools), a lot of people pay for sublime text.

Re: Travels with Smalltalk (1995)

#17

Post by matfil »

geocar wrote: post #9
matfil wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twenty years ago (crikey, that long?), I was a pretty vocal Open Source advocate. At the time, it seemed like the only way to avoid a Microsoft monoculture, and I'm still not sure that wasn't true. But now we're seeing monocultures of corporate-sponsored open source (Chrome/Blink's dominance seems particularly alarming in this sense), and managers who are more reluctant than ever to accept technical solutions which a…

The Cloud is similarly tricky: As we can factor our non-essential costs and push them to someone who can trade on their efficiency- there may still be competitors to Amazon, but monoculture is creating a strangling-effect there as well. I'm hoping that privacy and legislative effects will force companies to pull more things in-house so that they can provide controls and guarantees about their use. This can be good fo…

I'm certainly with you on The Cloud. I've been expecting a backlash for a while, but not much sign of it so far. A big monthly bill from $CLOUD_VENDOR_OF_CHOICE seems to have become this century's equivalent of "nobody gets fired for buying IBM".

Makes me think: a few years ago, there was some or other beer in the UK that was (heavily) advertised with the slogan "reassuringly expensive". The Cloud vendors (perhaps AWS in particular) seem to be going down that path a bit. Very interesting to juxtapose the reluctance to pay for software with an apparent eagerness to pay for Cloud services.

Re: Travels with Smalltalk (1995)

#18

Post by EdwardCoffin »

ngcc_hk wrote: post #2

Still relevant today? In 1988, I was briefed by Ibm how they would use Smalltalk with about 10 programmer develop something to ... do not believe them for 1s. What is the business model is then what Microsoft teach the world. It is not technology but the business (the share to the inventor and investor) or later in 1990s (we learn from open sources) the governance and partipation model that rule. Also, it is dynamic…

As I understand your comment, you are saying:

1) thirty years ago you were given a sales pitch about Smalltalk that you disbelieved

2) You don't know how to make it work with a large team

3) That you gave up reading an article that is written for an audience of Smalltalk programmers on how to handle a particular situation, despite you yourself presumably not being a Smalltalk programmer

How is any of this relevant?

Re: Travels with Smalltalk (1995)

#19

Post by pjmlp »

xfer wrote: post #16
geocar wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely a big factor, but when did it occur? A long time ago I purchased Turbo C++, and then Watcom, but as soon as GCC got good enough I never paid for another compiler again. I would love to make a great compiler, but how could I afford to when I'm competing with free?

Well, look at lispworks for example, that compiler costs $1500 for a hobbyist edition, i can't afford to pay for that. Maybe if you price your product reasonably for end users you can still sell software(including compilers/devtools), a lot of people pay for sublime text.

Sublime Text is a good example that always gets posts about devs not wanting to pay for a mere $80 for a perpetual license, valid across all supported OSes, in spite of making much more than that per hour in many world regions.

Re: Travels with Smalltalk (1995)

#20

Post by gaius »

em-bee wrote: post #4
ngcc_hk wrote: post #2

Still relevant today? In 1988, I was briefed by Ibm how they would use Smalltalk with about 10 programmer develop something to ... do not believe them for 1s. What is the business model is then what Microsoft teach the world. It is not technology but the business (the share to the inventor and investor) or later in 1990s (we learn from open sources) the governance and partipation model that rule. Also, it is dynamic…

i am struggeling to understand what you are trying to say. could you please elaborate? what is it that you don't believe about IBM? and what is your point about large teams and new firms? here are my thoughts: if you didn't think smalltalk was useful in 1988 then you probably won't feel any different today. i feel today that smalltalk is interesting. in 1988 it would have blown my mind. here is why: today most langua…

It’s no mystery. In the early-mid 90s IBM was ramping up on Smalltalk believing it to be the language of the future enterprise. In the late 90s they realised that jumping on the Java bandwagon would be more profitable so they ditched Smalltalk almost overnight. The same reason IBM does anything, including Linux.
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