Marten Feldtmann:

Andre Schnoor schrieb:

 >
 > Anyway, Smalltalk still has to get some homework done (e.g. better
deployment tools).

  Yes, indeed ! Windows is the most important market for all
vendors (even for VW, VA ) - then do whatever you can do to
support this market very well:

  - native widgets
  - access to active X controls
  - interop with .NET
  - build community
  - reporting framework
  - relational mapping framework
  - threading support
  - offer suppor for famous tools like Word, Excel,
    OpenOffice, Mozilla, IE etc ....
  - very fast building GUI interface
  - support for all that silly, unserious stuff - which the
    end user likes so much: wheel mouse, schema support ...

  then perhaps improve the other stuff:

  - integrated development for NLS oriented applications
  - installation support
  - integrated SUnit, Refactoring Browser and statistic
    and documentation tools.
  - offer the users a special way for often used programming
    tasks (sql query, view sql results in tables)

  and new ideas:

  - interface support

  and noone will have any success without:

  - create a community

  Because no Smalltalk vendor is able to offer solutions for
all of these points above - the rest is done by the
community. But the community is a most critical one - no
member of a free community will pay EUR 1500 each year
just to give the own tools away.

  And select other platforms and offer the same stuff there
and when I look at the market, there are only two other
potential client platforms: Apple and Linux.

  Smalltalkers are said to have a high productivity - but they
get lost of this productivity because every Smalltalker has to
invent the most simpliest tools again and again.

  For the VA friends of us: I used VA for 4 years without ever
doing a serious look into the ABT-Builder stuff and the ideas
they have. I always used WindowBuilder.

  Now I'm doing a slightly switch back to the Abt Builder stuff
and I learned, that it is by far the most effective way of
building a GUI interface. It's a suitable place for
third party market (which existed a decade ago). (I know of
the new graphical way of builing unreadable graphical code
this way - but it's a good way to get GUI in a VERY fast
way).

  The ABT-Builder forces one to build reusable tools, because
it supports GUI, logic and interface specification.

  Marten

--
Marten Feldtmann - Germany - Software Development
Information regarding VA Smalltalk and DMS-system
"MSK - Mien Schrievkrom" at: www.schrievkrom.de

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