RailsConf 09: Robert Martin, "What Killed Smalltalk Could K

[sindbad1900]

I'd say Sun killed Smalltalk, in short. If they'd chosen Smalltalk instead of Java, we'd likely be better off now.

[randito]

What a fantastic speaker...

[Tygryss84]

not that I don't like bob, but I get the feeling that if you seen one his talk, you've seen them all :) - He's a great speeker, and enjoy his listening to him, it's just that I don't feel I learned anything :) - but still it's an hour well spent :)

[fdeutschs]

What killed Smalltalk were the people who was in control of it (ParcPlace). They just throw the towel against Java, which at that time was orders of magnitude inferior in almost all angles. Problem with Smalltalk was it did not evolve to solve its weak aspects, like real multithread with Java semantics like. It took years for Sun and the community to make Java what it is now. I just wonder what would be if Smalltalk would have that leverage.

[stingerster]

@fdeutschs Objective C

[fdeutschs]

@stingerster No way ! I personally think it totally kills the elegance of the Smalltalk language. Is not that bad but I find it very confusing syntax, particulary dealing with the different ways to handle memory, and not that dynamic as ST or Java. My point of view, of course.

[stingerster]

@fdeutschs Obj C is evolving and has a large sponsor behind it. As the revisions continue it picks up the best features from other languages as well. But, it's foundation was built on ideals it took from smalltalk. It's possible by means discipline to stay on the smalltalk path within ObjC.

[fdeutschs]

What killed Smalltalk were the people who was in control of it (ParcPlace). They just throw the towel against Java, which at that time was orders of magnitude inferior in almost all angles. Problem with Smalltalk was it did not evolve to solve its weak aspects, like real multithread with Java semantics like. It took years for Sun and the community to make Java what it is now. I just wonder what would be if Smalltalk would have that leverage.

[kefsound]

4 viewers use PHP.

[berkut2006]

@kefsound

lol

[stingerster]

What killed Smalltalk was not arrogance, it was speed. It was simply put, slow. Ruby works so well because the underlying hardware is now multicore and so much faster. So Ruby doesn't suffer from the same performance issue. However, advances in performance such as MacRuby's LLVM implementation show there is still a demand to take performance into consideration especially in a large data center app.

[zyrgzyrg]

@stingerster Are you kinda stupid?

Speed do't mean a damn thing for enterprise.

[stingerster]

@zyrgzyrg Sure it does.

[Kukurii]

boring topic? what are you talking about, this was amazing. Great presentation

[manghole]

Him moving doesn't annoy me, the cameraman following him does. Zoom out and hold it still.

[raneksi]

Annoys me how he's walking around so anxiously.

[ShawnMilo]

Not a boring topic -- actually many different, very interesting topics in one talk.

I'm a Python programmer and I still found the entire talk to be relevant and important.

[gijsco]

Presentation-wise very good for such a boring topic. Excellent intro too.. seemingly unrelated but well executed.. Also, if someone can talk about a subject for one hour non-stop, you know you're an expert.

[wresing]

This guy is a jerk - Smalltalk is not dead. Squeak Rulz. Dude contradicts himself. He points out that the ideas that come from a language move into other languages. You can write the entire language Ruby in Smalltalk or the other way around. The community is what is important. And jerks like this just use Java instead of working with principle. The Smalltalk community was based on openness, unlike this guy's stuff.

And by the way - Victory is inevitable you stupid fool...ha ha ha.