yes indeed.

Carl Gundel will stop by NYC Smalltalk this upcoming April 6th and present on Liberty BASIC a popular shareware BASIC IDE. He will discuss:

• Why Smalltalk
• The issues involved in building IDEs
• Pollock, the new GUI framework for VisualWorks which Liberty BASIC is utilizing.

Here is one screenshot:

and another

This is apparently the MAC look.

It should be fun. Please check in with our wiki for directions.

See you all there.

-Charles

Both James Robertson and Suzanne Fortman of Cincom Smalltalk attended. James was the presenter so the presentation focused mostly on the VisualWorks product roadmap. However, the fact that Suzanne attended meant that we got to ask some marketing related questions. The presentation slides can be found here. However, to access these you will have to join our yahoo group which takes no time.

In anycase, here is my recap:

The Product

• Lot of emphasis on integrating VisualWorks with ObjectStudio
• OS developers get to run on VW a faster VM and much better IDE including StORE source code control.
• VW developers get to use some interesting ActiveX embedding technology and native widgets on Windows of course.
• This also allows ObjectStudio clients to leverage their investment in OS but also provides them with a forward path into VisualWorks
• My impression was that there is no interest in advancing ObjectStudio per se i.e. beyond the integration effort with VisualWorks. That makes sense to me.
• More platform support including the Windows CE / PocketPC platforms
• 64 bit support for Linux and Solaris, holding off on 64 bit on Windows
• Smalltalk Runtime Environment build up deployment mechanism is supposedly a major area of focus. Unfortunately, this is to be spread over the “next” major releases. I think that most of us feel that this should be a focus of the very next release. A lot would be accomplished if Cincom “component-ized” the rest of their IDE and kernel into parcels which should not be a big job.
• Pollock is of course on the plate now advancing into incorporating Splash which is Pollock’s version of the UI Painter to be simplistic.
• Glorp , the object – relational mapping tool which is a next generation TopLink or better said a re-thought out and re-architecture of that problem space will be officially supported by end of year 2006.

The Marketing

I had a chance to speak to James and Suzzane about this. The general gist was it is “not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” i.e. you are not going to see Cincom actively marketing Smalltalk i.e. at least not in the traditional ways i.e. through a visible magazine ad campaign for example. They just don’t have the budget nor could they ever compete with somebody like IBM and SUN etc. Rather, its the Smalltalk community that should be actively promoting Smalltalk. Well, I agree but easier said than done. One suggestion that I had which I had brought up before to STIC was to somehow facilitate the creation and sustain of more “active” Smalltalk user groups by helping with presentations, sponsoring or finding sponsors for user groups i.e. corporations , academic institutions that would be willing to provide time and meeting space for STUG meetings. I was told that they already do some of that. Certainly, Cincom has always been very supportive of NYC Smalltalk. However, I really don’t see many “active” user groups i.e. groups that meet at least six times a year. It has gotten better in the last past two years but we still need more activity. It is important to have a “local” Smalltalk presence. I would suggest that all Smalltalk user groups advertize their meetings at the very least in comp.lang.smalltalk. This will encourage others to start groups. If you want to start a Smalltalk user’s group don’t be shy. Call Cincom who has expressed their willingness to help and ask them to help you find a meeting venue, they have many contacts. If you happen to live in an area where a Cincom engineer lives I’m sure that said engineer and that Cincom Smalltalk would be very happy to help your group with a commitment to one presentation per year.

If any NYC Smalltalk member would like to add any comments or to make any corrections please feel free to add a comment to this blog.

Our next presentation scheduled for the first week in April will feature Liberty BASIC , a BASIC IDE written in Smalltalk. More later.