Download VisualAge for Smalltalk Handbook Volume 1

Smalltalk Strategy
Is Smalltalk strategic?
Smalltalk is a strategic language for IBM and will be developed as a
standards compliant, open, multiplatform language. Smalltalk is an
important and emerging object-oriented language in the industry. Its use in
business and commercial application development is growing rapidly. IBM
is chairing the effort to develop ANSI standards for Smalltalk, and a full
range of third party consultants, tool vendors, and service providers are
available to complement the offerings of Smalltalk vendors. IBM recognizes
the value of Smalltalk and is delivering a full range of tools, education,
consulting, and service offerings to address this important market.
Smalltalk and Java
Will Java overpower Smalltalk?
While not disregarding the strength of Java, we must note that Smalltalk is
superior to Java in many ways. The main strength of Smalltalk is its
maturity. Smalltalk has been around for 25 years. By contrast, Java is in its
very infancy. Smalltalk′s maturity has some important effects:
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Code quality. Smalltalk systems have been refined by several
generations of programmers and have proved to be free of both coding
bugs and, more importantly, ideological bugs.
•
Legacy code. There is a huge estate of existing Smalltalk applications.
•
Performance. Smalltalk is quite fast, thanks to the concerted efforts of
many programmers during the last 25 years. Java needs an investment
of similar effort to reach a comparable level of performance.
Configuration Management
How does VisualAge for Smalltalk support configuration management?
OTI′s ENVY configuration management and version control system is
included in the VisualAge for Smalltalk Professional and Professional Server
products, precluding the need to order a separate product and managing
compatability between VisualAge and ENVY. The October 9, 1995 issue of
InfoWorld, states that : ″IBM did a superb job weaving Object Technology
Chapter 1. What Is VisualAge for Smalltalk?
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