Smalltalk Objection Handling

Objection handling is a standard part of sales preparation. Can it be applied to Smalltalk ?

Here is the start of a list of possible objections to using Smalltalk and some answers. The idea is for the Smalltalk community to provide the answers, pointers to examples etc.:

• No one uses it any more
  
  
  
  • Yes they do, may be not as many as use Java or Visual Basic. To find a Smalltalk community take a look at:
    
    
    
    • Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk, comp.lang.smalltalk.advocacy etc.
      
    • Blogs: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/userblogs as a staarting point
      
    • These companies: http://www.whysmalltalk.com/production/index.htm
      
    
    
  
  
• You can't do web pages in it
  
  
  
  • Yes , you can ! And blogs! See the cincom reference above for an example. Example code can be found .....
    
  
  
• The image is bloated
  
  
  
  • Not by comparison with, say, a JDK or .NET environment. The well known Smalltalk application bottomFeeder is only approx. 7M. It is upgradeable and can have other Smalltalk plugins loaded.
    
  
  
• There is no equivalent to Java Applets
  

  [I'll be looking at the Cincom Web Tutorial on this
  

• It is hard to call other languages
  

  See examples ...
  

• It is hard to call from other languages
  

  See examples ....
  

• There is no strong typing
  

  There is much debate about this topic in language circles thse days, and many would cite the lack of stong type checking at all times as a benefit. Many of the benefits of strong typing can be countered by "test-first" strategies.
  

To be continued....

Getting into Smalltalk

After over a decade away I decided to see whre Smalltalk had got to in that time.

I originally thought that there would be little activity, but in fact there is quite a lot going on. VisualWorks ( and others) are still going and there is a Blog community here:
http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/userblogs

The following post:
Smalltalk and Productivity
got me thinking about why so many people have reservations about Smalltalk and what the Smalltalk community could do about it.

To be continued ......