The New York STUG is meeting soon:
NYC Smalltalk will be meeting on November 16th where we will check out Microlingua - a new Smalltalk dialect being developed to work in resource constrained environments.
Visit our wiki for more detais
Our meetings are open to the general public. Invite a friend.
Frank Hayes makes a contrarian point about outsourcing:
With the dot-coms, we didn't know whether a Web-based business model would work at all -- or if it did, what kinds of businesses it would support. We didn't know how fast business could shift to the Web, or whether dot-coms really could transform retailing. All we knew was that bits cost less than bricks, so we figured everything else must cost less on the Internet, too.
A scrap of data, an untried business model and a lot of faith: That was the dot-com way, and we all chased it.
And offshoring? We know offshore programmers get paid less -- they're the bits-cheaper-than-bricks part of the scheme.
But we don't know what kinds of corporate IT projects can be effectively offshored. Or what happens to quality levels as offshoring volume ramps up. Or whether outsourcing will leave us with the flexibility and agility to adjust to rapidly changing business conditions, take advantage of new market opportunities and quickly respond to new user needs.
Great points, and it echos something I've said - the practice of tossing requirements over the wall to IT and getting a system back later never worked that well when the IT guys were local. What makes anyone think it will work well when they are 12 hours away (in timezone terms)? Something to consider...
ComputerWorld lists a bunch of reasons for corporations to worry about what their bloggers are writing. Interesting stuff, and definitely worth looking at. Bear in mind that free speech only gives you the right to express an opinion - it doesn't protect you from libel, nor does it guarantee you access to a soapbox...
Another batch of comment spam materialized overnight - I've dispatched it all, and added some code to the server that ought to get rid of most of it. It's not the best or smartest filter ever, but it I'm hopeful. We'll see how it goes. In the meantime, I'm off to a birthday party for a friend's daughter - I'll be offline most of the day.
Blaine makes the case for Smalltalk as a scripting language:
We all know that scripting is helpful for kicking off systems, moving files around, querying the state of a running application, and etc. This is available off the shelf for every Smalltalk dialect that I know of. The cool thing about scripting in Smalltalk is that since you have a powerful environment around you, you can write your script in a workspace. Now, if your script gets too big, you can start moving it to classes and refactoring. You can also move scripts to external files and load them in a runtime. Why do you configuration files when you can have runnable code that does it for you? Let the objects do the talking! Scripting is also great in running systems. If you run Smalltalk in headless mode, you can have scripts that query the state of the system while it's running! This can be very powerful and DANGEROUS! But, wait a minute, we have access to the compiled code and we can actually query the compiled code to make sure it doesn't do anything nasty. The bounds are limitless and once you start thingking about them, you wonder why am I writing unix bash scripts and then, you might be wondering, why not have the power of a compiled language, but the expressive power of an interpreted one? Smalltalk is all that and a whole lot more.
Beyond that, it's not hard to make VisualWorks (part of Cincom Smalltalk) act as a "real" scripting tool. You can set up an image that will read from stdin, expect to find a script (Smalltalk in file-out format) - load it, run, and exit. It's not perfect in that role yet - but it's one of the things we are working on at Cincom.
Smalltalk Solutions is the premier forum for bringing together Smalltalk users, developers, and enthusiasts. This year's conference will take place June 27-29 in fun-filled Orlando at the Wyndham Orlando Resort
We are currently accepting proposals for all varieties of talks involving Smalltalk technology and other areas of interest to Smalltalkers. We need your participation to help maintain the high technical level of the conference! See http://www.smalltalksolutions.com/participate2005.htm for more information.
The Conference will conveniently take place entirely within the Wyndham Orlando Resort:
Smalltalk Solutions 2005 has a great rate of $109 USD plus applicable taxes. Please call early (407-351-2420) and mention Smalltalk Solutions 2005 when making your reservations for the discount rate.
Wyndham Orlando Resort is a tropical paradise in the heart of the world's most popular vacation destination. Lush gardens and romantic lagoons make it easy to forget that this elegant resort is located on bustling International Drive. Florida's most thrilling theme parks - Walt Disney World®, Universal Studios® Florida and Sea World® Adventure Park - and the Orange County Convention Center are only minutes away.
Relax in a secluded, old Floridian-style villa. The hotel guest rooms are full of delightful touches like pillowtop mattresses and in-room movies. Suites with bunk beds and play areas just for kids are perfect for families.
Outside, enjoy a host of pleasures like Gatorville Bar & Grill and three gorgeous pools. Jog along a tropical garden path or visit our health club. Or find a treasure in one of the great shops that are just steps away. When the sun goes down, dine in the casual elegance of our Augustine's Grille. Then revel in Orlando's hottest nightspots on International Drive.
Wyndham hotels has an exciting program full of great benefits for their guests. The program is called Wyndham by Request and by joining you receive a room personalized to your specifications including:
Smalltalk Solutions is a Smalltalk Industry Council Event. The Smalltalk Industry Council (STIC) is a nonprofit trade association whose goal is to promote the awareness of and increase demand for Smalltalk.
Lileks has a funny bleat up today - scroll down to his screen shots from "The Asphalt Jungle" - this one in particular. As he says, go ahead - just hang that stage light anywhere! Heh.
Jason Jones has the hotel Info for StS 2005. It's going to be a great conference!
Avi notes that the Continuation based web app meme is spreading - the name is changing as it goes, but the idea is getting around.
Go look at the fun Ted Neward is having with Sun over copyright issues. This is hardly Sun specific; it's more of an environmental issue in the business arena at present...
Blaine Buxton says just give it a shot:
Isn't it time to deal with complexity with a simple and powerful language? Read this article and realize Smalltalk could be used to fix the "complexity" problem by dealing with it instead of masking it with more complexity. IT systems are complex. You need a language that can deal with it: Smalltalk. If you want rising IT costs and complexity, do what everyone else is doing. Why not try something new, yet has had lots of time to mature
The worst that can happen? You'll decide on something else. Grab the download and have a look
I'd like to thank David Buck and Bob Nemec for the opportunity to present BottomFeeder in Ottawa and Toronto (respectively). The talks went well, and we had a great set of conversations afterwards - both at the presentations and in the post meeting get-togethers. There are some great folks in Ottawa and Toronto, and I'm already looking forward to my next visit.
I'll have more to say later - I was traveling from Ottawa to Toronto (by car) today - I spoke at the STUG in Ottawa last night, and Toronto just now. Off for dinner and drinks now!
This must be something to do with my proxy settings - or just trolls. I can resolve any of the Cincom Smalltalk blogs, but I can't get to my own. Oddly enough, I can get to the browser login page - just not the actual blog page. I'm on crappy dialup at a hotel in Ottawa.... this just stumps me.
The election has come and gone without major controversy, and without any real question as to who won. The various news outlets are being cautious about calling the race - that stands to reason after they all got burned in 2000. I'm not terribly surprised by the outcome (and I don't mean the winner specifically)
The 2000 election was a rarity - the last time anything like it occurred was 1876 (and before that, the 1820's). Disputed, close elections that are decided by the House (as happened a few times in the early 19th century) or by special procedure (an extra-judicial panel in 1876, the Supreme Court in 2000) are just rare. What they generally mean is:
* The race was between candidates that the electorate has a hard time separating - there's a real or perceived non-difference. That's what happened in 1876 and 2000 * There's more than two candidates who make a major showing - this is what happened when Jefferson was selected by the House, for instance - and when Quincy Adams beat JacksonNeither situation was the case this year. Most people saw real differences between the 2 major candidates and voted accordingly. The third party candidates - Nader, the Libertarians, et. al. - none of them captured the kind of interest that Perot did in 1992, or that Teddy Roosevelt did in 1912. It all came down to a relatively clear choice between competing philosophies - and one of them won.
If you look at this as a marketing/sales exercise, one side - the Republicans - made the sale. They gained seats in the House, they gained seats in the Senate, and they won the Presidency (both in electoral vote and popular vote terms). The other side - the Democrats - failed to make the sale. The electorate broke towards the Republican argument at the closing bell, and that made all the difference.
It's time for the losers to be gracious, and get back to the blackboard - so that they know how to do better in the next election cycle (not unlike a sales team meeting at the end of the fiscal year reviewing a bad year, actually). The winning side can't really gloat - again, like a winning sales organization, there's no guarantee that the buyers will renew the contracts next time around unless they deliver on their promises. In politics and IT sales, no win is permanent - there's always a chance of "buyers remorse" - which is why sales and marketing teams, no less than political analysts, need to keep their eye on the ball.
I'm heading to the airport, ready to speak in Ottawa and Toronto. I'm tired - it was a long night of watching election returns. I'm in a great mood though - the election season is over!
We (Cincom) have a press release out out on the users conference in December.
The election is showing just how much of a new media ballgame it is now. In past elections, the "old" media - TV, radio - kept a lid on exit polls until near the time polls closed. In the business world, marketing departments kept a lid on announcements until a properly crafted press release could be rolled. Now look at things:
This is happening in just about every realm you can imagine - sports, politics, IT, marketing across all sorts of products. Marketing departments have been as slow as the TV networks in picking up on this change-over - and they have been blind-sided every bit as often. It should be an interesting next few years.
Lawsuits as a strategy and ignoring your own product line just aren't working out for SCO - check out this Linux Today set of articles. Sometimes, bad things do happen to bad people...
Ok, this is funny. I'm not saying it means anything, I just found it amusing - Scoble wore out the keyboard on his Tablet
When I got there he had a brown box. It's a new Toshiba Tablet PC! Whew, just in time, too. My old one was wearing out. Literally. I typed so much on it that you can see a wear pattern on the keyboard. But, now, gotta move everything over to the new one. Work ahead!
Heh
Speaking of Ottawa, I'll be having dinner with David Buck and whoever else shows up - we'll be meeting at Lonestar at 5 PM, and then heading over to the meeting (which begins at 7). See you there!
Well, it's been a long and winding campaign season - I'm extremely glad that it's winding down. Contrary to the "conventional wisdom", I expect that we'll have a clear winner by the end of the day tomorrow; elections like the 2000 one are extremely rare in the US (the last one was in 1876). I certainly hope it's all resolved as it normally is - I'm heading out for two speaking engagements on November 3rd and 4th:
I'll be talking about BottomFeeder implementation details, and fielding whatever questions come up. In the meantime, here's hoping that we have a nice, peaceful, normal election. I also have a contrarian tip - if you are still undecided at this point: Please Don't Vote. Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, there's a pretty clear set of differences between the two major candidates, and a large variety of third party candidates for "message sending".
Cincom Smalltalk User Conference 2004 |
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7th December 2004
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| 11:15 - 12:00 |
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| 17:30 - 18:00 |
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| 18:00 -19:30 |
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8th December 2004
9th December 2004
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| 08:30 - 09:15 |
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| 09:15 - 10:00 |
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| 10:00 - 10:30 |
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| 10:30 - 11:30 |
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During the conference there will be the opportunity to Meet the Experts in a seperate room to discuss the presented items - or other - more in detail.
In the Customer Advisory Board sessions you'll have the opportunity to tell in public our product, support and engineering management what you think we should add or enhance in our product and services offering to meet your specific needs. This information will flow into our plannings for the further direction of Cincom Smalltalk.
We will not only serve food for the brain: during the Coffee Breaks you'll get refreshments and we'll invite you to Lunch and Dinner. During these times you'll have the opportunity to talk to Cincomers in a relaxed casual athmosphere. And of course you'll be able to exchange your experiences, opinions, questions and solutions also with other users of Cincom Smalltalk.
Tracks:
| Cincom Smalltalk general |
| Cincom Smalltalk ObjectStudio |
| Cincom Smalltalk VisualWorks |
| Topics of general interest |
Talks:
Cincom and Cincom Smalltalk: Commitment
and Progress, Dave Wood (Cincom
Systems)
In his presentation Dave Wood, Managing Director of Cincom EMEA, will
present the history of the company Cincom and our mission and business
ethics. While our whole industry has been suffering from the burst of the
".com bubble" and the various incidents of world wide politics and economics
Cincom and Cincom users have been able to continously draw increased benefits
from Cincom's High Value, Low Cost, Rapid ROI and Low Risk solutions. Dave
Wood will describe Cincom's market strategy and which important role Cincom
Smalltalk plays in Cincom's offering portfolio.
Cincom Smalltalk Product Roadmap,
James
R. Robertson (Cincom
Systems)
I'll be talking about the roadmap for Cincom Smalltalk - where we are,
what we are working on, and what we plan to support in the near-medium
term.
Building Web Applications in Smalltalk,
Alan
Knight (Cincom Systems)
The VisualWorks Web Toolkit is a standards-based mechanism for building
and serving web applications. Implementing mechanisms compatible with servlets,
ASP, and JSP, it makes it easy to build scalable web applications leveraging
standard industry patterns, and in ways compatible with other servers.
This talk will describe the basic architecture of the Web Toolkit, and
some tips for working successfully with it, recent additions, and future
plans.
ObjectStudio Opentalk, Len
Lutomski (Cincom Systems),
Andreas
Hiltner (Cincom Systems)
VisualWorks and ObjectStudio each have their own advantages, but until
now it has been difficult to use them together. That has changed.
Cincom has ported Opentalk-STST, VisualWorks' Smalltalk-to-Smalltalk communication
framework to ObjectStudio. Now, the two dialects of Cincom Smalltalk can
interoperate. This presentation introduces Opentalk-STST and the
ObjectStudio port, provides a quick Opentalk-STST tutorial, and discusses
the things you need to keep in mind when interoperating across Smalltalk
dialects.
The VM Plugin Framework for VisualWorks,
Sudhakar
Krishnamachari (Cincom
Systems)
The VM Plugin framework is used to develop higher-performance C implementations
of algorithms or code sections for use as primitives dynamically loaded
into the virtual machine. The major part of the development effort is in
working at Smalltalk level coding to create all the methods that are finally
exported as a C code file for compilation as a dll and relinking.
ObjectStudio on the Web using Opentalk and Web
Toolkit, Mark Grinnell (Cincom
Systems), Andreas Hiltner (Cincom
Systems),
Alan Knight (Cincom
Systems), Len Lutomski (Cincom
Systems)
The ability of ObjectStudio and VisualWorks to interoperate over Opentalk
gives ObjectStudio users access to the whole range of web capabilities
in VisualWorks. The possibilities range from giving an ObjectStudio application
access to corporate data provided over web protocols, to providing Windows
native widget clients for VisualWorks applications. In this presentation
we demonstrate the design and the mechanics of a sample application which
uses ObjectStudio and VisualWorks, interoperating over Opentalk-STST, to
put an ObjectStudio application interface on the Web.
VisualWorks DotNetConnect: Bridging worlds,
Andreas
Tönne (Georg Heeg eK)
.NET is one of the emerging technologies that Smalltalk developers
cannot ignore. Integrating Smalltalk applications with .NET-components
will be a regular requirement in projects. The new VisualWorks component
DotNetConnect allows a VisualWorks application to import .NET-Assemblies
and use the contained types as Smalltalk classes in a transparent way.
The talk shows on a small example how simple it is to use .NET-Assemblies
even without knowing much about .NET itself. We also show the practical
limitations and the future direction of development. DotNetConnect was
developed for Cincom by Georg Heeg eK.
Next-Generation Database Mapping and Dialect
Interoperability, Alan Knight (Cincom
Systems)
Smalltalk has long been a leader in storing objects in databases. For
relational databases, Object Studio's POF, and the VisualWorks ObjectLens
were very early examples that were also very powerful and still in active
use today. This talk describes efforts towards a next-generation database
mapping library that can preserve high-level compatibility with these older
systems, while greatly expanding on their capabilities. The core mapping
engine for this is the open source GLORP library, which is portable across
Smalltalk dialects. One of the things we have done is to map the Store
database schema using this library. This enables a variety of tools which
can work with Store data directly from other dialects, including Squeak,
VisualAge, and ObjectStudio. We hope that this can serve as a mechanism
for interoperability between dialects.
Support to the Rescue...oops... Resolution,
Kim
Thomas (Cincom Systems)
This talk will cover
What's going on with my case?
1. Cincom's support response process.
2. Support levels and severity levels
3. Resource infrastructure
What's new about support?
1. Publishing resolutions
2. Cincom Smalltalk Customer news group as a support avenue
3. More information sharing, i.e. e-mail announcements on available
resolutions
4. Past staff expansion and development
What the future holds
1. Continuing to develop the support organization
a. Identify areas of expertise
b. Continue certificaton process
c. Development related activities
2. Reduce time to respond
3. Reduce time to resolution
Agile Project Management using SCRUM, Joseph
Pelrine (MetaProg GmbH)
Agile software development methodlogies, XP being the most known one,
are becoming more and more accepted. They take the different nature of
software
seriously and help delivering usable software to the needs of the customer
on time and on budget. At the same time agile methodlogies minimize the
risks and even if a project should be stopped for whatever reason the customer
has not wasted his investment but owns a working system which operates
to his specification up that time. But how would one control and manage
projects using such methodlogies? In deed classical project management
has typically still the "waterfall" in mind and isn't well suited at all.
SCRUM is a proven project management methodlogy that fits nicely with agile
processes - especially XP. We will show and explain the underlying principles
and report from real life projects.
Performance Tuning of ObjectStudio applications, Mark Grinnell (Cincom Systems)
XPerience eXtreme Programming, Joseph
Pelrine (MetaProg GmbH)
eXtreme Programming - the most widely known agile software development
methodology - consists of a set of best practices that mutually support
each other to reach the goal of a user centric reactive and lean development
process. This talk will give an overview about these best practices and
how they are supported in the IDE of Cincom Smalltalk VisualWorks. In a
life demo it will especially be shown how easy and efficient it is to conduct
the "test first" paradigm with the current SUnit implementation in the
tool set.
Tips and Tricks for developing GUIs in ObjectStudio,
Eduard
Maydanik (Cincom Systems)
In my talk I will give you an overview about the current and upcoming
features of the ObjectStudio GUI system. Especially you will hear - and
see - about:
- what was fixed
- what is new
- how to use new features
- what you should and what you shouldn't do - and why!
- how to customize the default behavior of widgets
VisualWorks Tools and Pollock, Vassili
Bykov (Cincom Systems)
Pollock is the new VisualWorks widget set, which recently has reached
the Feature Set 1 stage. The most important widgets are implemented, though
both interfaces and implementation are still being cleaned up, and no visual
GUI builder is included. This presentation will outline the future path
in making Pollock the default VisualWorks widget set and developing VisualWorks
tools, as well as demonstrate both building applications using Pollock
in its present state and various interesting features of the current VisualWorks
tool set.
Multithreading in ObjectStudio,
Andreas
Hiltner (Cincom Systems)
We will discuss the design and implementation of multithreading in
ObjectStudio. We will discuss some common situations where a multithreaded
approach could improve an application, using examples of how to modify
existing code to use a separate thread. We will explain the particular
issues involved with doing GUI programming with threads, and accessing
databases with threads.
Never mind the quality, feel the width!
64-bits and beyond...,
Eliot Miranda (Cincom
Systems)
Eliot will demo the new 64-bit implementation of VisualWorks and describe
its key features, both existing and planned. He will also give brief overviews
of some short to medium-term directions for VisualWorks such as AOStA,
an adaptive optimization framework for VisualWorks and the Smalltalk Runtime
Environment, a "scripting" focus.
The Future of ObjectStudio, Mark
Grinnell (Cincom Systems),
Andreas
Hiltner (Cincom Systems),
Helge
Nowak (Cincom Systems)
Our research into possibilities for a next generation ObjectStudio
has opened two major roads to the future: a radical approach by fitting
ObjectStudio into Microsoft's .NET framework. Or a more evolutionary approach
by continuing to enhance the current technology to gain more performance
and robustness and at the same time increasing the collaboration with VisualWorks
to make the server features of VisualWorks even more easily accessible
from ObjectStudio. We will present the current state of the art of our
research on this topic. Either way we go we are committed to implement
your needs and keep any impact on your business as minimal as possible.
We will be interested in your feedback.
ObjectStudio Unicode, Alexander
Augustin (Georg Heeg eK)
ObjectStudio up to version 6.9.1 supports two eight bit character sets
of the underlying Windows operating system: the default OEM and Windows
character sets. In Western Europe these two character sets are Codepage
850 and Codepage 1252. Neither character set is capable of representing
Cyrillic, Greek, Japanese or Chinese characters. Not even Czech characters
like ? or Polish characters like ? can be represented. With the enlargement
of the European Union and with companies acting globally ObjectStudio customers
require support world wide languages. Following both international standards
and Microsoft's direction Unicode support is the decision of choice.
ObjectStudio Unicode is a complete ObjectStudio development and execution System which uses Unicode characters instead of eight bit characters internally as well as for input and output including database and file access, user input and display output. This includes support for all European languages as well as for Asian languages like Japanese, Korean and Chinese.
The presentation will deal with the differences between the Unicode and the non-Unicode versions of ObjectStudio as well as show additional features in the Unicode version and will give some examples on how the new features can be used.
The Value of Smalltalk: valuing and risk management
in Smalltalk, Niall Ross
The Kapital system is key to JPMorgan Chase' leading position in the
derivatives market (http://www.cincom.com/pdf/CS040819-1.pdf). Niall will
present some specific examples of how features of Smalltalk feed into capabilities
of the Kapital system that give business advantage.
Save your Investment: Re-Architecting
existing Applications for SOA, Helge Nowak (Cincom
Systems),
Michel Bany (Cincom
Systems)
A common pattern we meet in customer situations is that they have existing
applications and someone (typical a manager...) wants "a Web solution"
or "Web Services". Not only in the minds of non-technical people but indeed
in reality there is a lot of business potential associated with these new
architectures. So these are serious wishes. Is this the time to adopt a
new technology? Ask yourself: what would I gain? What would I lose? Looking
closer you'll see: you would gain costs and risks. And you lose the investment
already made into your existing systems.
Isn't there a better way? We will show that you can save your investment. We will show that you can leverage the existing knowledge and expertise of your developers in both the technology and your business processes to adopt the new architectures. We will show that you can exploit the benefits from moving to these architectures much more rapidly and with much less risk.
The talk will explain the fundamental differences between the various software architectures from fat (or rich?) client to Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). We will depict how you can go a straight and even route from where you are to where you want to be. Don't worry, be happy: you got Cincom Smnalltalk!
Koramis SpecSheet: an intuitive Web Application for Electrical Engineers and how Smalltalk Saved me from an Error, Hans Peter Fichtner (Koramis GmbH & Co.KG)
VisualWaf: Web application development in
the MVC style, Andreas Tönne (Georg
Heeg eK)
We show how to develop web applications easily with VisualWaf. VisualWaf
is an add-on for the WebToolkit with a powerful abstraction of Web idiosyncrasies
but without breaking with the Web style of thinking in sites, pages and
requests. It centers around a translation of the MVC-pattern to Web applications.
This puts the Smalltalk programmer in the position to program like he would
for a GUI application but still he can collaborate with Web-designers in
the way they expect it. VisualWaf is used for years by Georg Heeg eK as
a consulting tool in several customer projects in the banking, insurance
and engineering domain. It is now marketed as a product.
Reusable Web Development With Seaside,
Avi
Bryant (beta4 productions), Michel
Bany (Cincom Systems)
Seaside is a web application framework available for VisualWorks Smalltalk.
Featured in keynote presentations at both Smalltalk Solutions and the ESUG
conference this year, Seaside has been praised for its innovative, radically
object oriented approach to web development. This talk will focus
on how Seaside leverages Smalltalk's strengths to enable a level of reusability
and maintainability in web applications that simply isn't possible using
other technologies. We will also demonstrate Seaside's strong, unique integration
with the VisualWorks development environment.
Speakers:
Alexander Augustin, Consultant, Georg
Heeg eK, Germany
Alexander Augustin is working as a software engineer at Georg Heeg
eK. He is the author of ObjectStudio Unicode. Additionally he has the taken
over the responsibility of VisualWorks COM Connect. Both, ObjectStudio
Unicode and the new COM Connect will ship with Cincom Smalltalk 2004 available
in December 2004.
Michel Bany, Senior Consultant, Cincom
Systems, Switzerland
Michel Bany is a technology consultant working for Cincom at the Geneva
office in Switzerland. Over the last 30 years he has helped many customers
to use Cincom technology like databases, transaction servers, programming
languages mainly on IBM mainframes to build successful solutions in various
business areas like manufacturing, banking, insurance, retail, government.
He has been interested in Smalltalk since '90 and became a Smalltalk consultant
when Cincom acquired ObjectStudio in '95. He is the main maintainer of
the Cincom Smalltalk ObjectStudio wiki where he contributed many goodies.
He is the maintainer of the Seaside port for Cincom Smalltalk VisualWorks.
Avi Bryant, Senior Consultant, beta4
productions, Canada
Avi Bryant is an independent consultant currently living in the Netherlands.
He is best known as the author and maintainer of widely used open source
version control, web development, and database access tools for Squeak
Smalltalk. He has helped his customers to use Smalltalk, Seaside, and Squeak
to build successful solutions for the travel and theatre industries, higher
education, and mobile devices. Avi previously worked as a developer and
research assistant for the University of British Columbia, Canada.
Vassili Bykov, VisualWorks Lead Engineer, Cincom
Systems, USA
Vassili Bykov is the VisualWorks Tools project lead, and a VisualWorks
user since version 1.0. After joining Cincom in July 2000 he has been responsible
for modernizing the look and feel of VisualWorks environment. His interests
range from information and graphic design to programming language implementation,
and he searches for balance between them in his current position. Prior
to this, Vassili was an object technology instructor with The Object People
and a member of TopLink/Smalltalk team.
Hans-Peter Fichtner, General Manager, Koramis GmbH & Co.KG, Germany
Mark Grinnell, ObjectStudio Lead Engineer, Cincom Systems, USA
Andreas Hiltner, ObjectStudio Lead Engineer, Cincom
Systems, Germany
Andreas Hiltner is a lead software engineer for Cincom Smalltalk ObjectStudio.
He works for Cincom since '97. Prior to joining Cincom he participated
in development and maintenance of a transaction-monitor and database access
system on various platforms.
Alan Knight, VisualWorks Lead Engineer, Cincom
Systems, Canada
Alan Knight is a lead software engineer at Cincom Systems of Canada,
and one of the prinicpal developers of the Web Toolkit. He has been with
Cincom since 2000. Prior to joining Cincom, he was Chief Architect for
TOPLink, an object-relational mapping library that has since been acquired
by Oracle, and was a member of the EJB 2.0 and JDO expert groups. He is
co-author of Mastering ENVY/Developer (Cambridge, 2001) and has written
and spoken extensively on a variety of topics. He was recently program
chair of Smalltalk Solutions 2004.
Sudhakar Krishnamachari, VisualWorks Engineer, Cincom
Systems, India
Sudhakar Krishnamachari is currently a Software Services Project Leader
(Smalltalk), with Cincom Systems India Pvt. Ltd. He has worked with the
Cincom Smalltalk Supports division prior to this for nearly a year. He
has also worked with ACA-Europe a French CAD firm as a Manager (Specs and
Testing) and handled development project team in C/C++ /VC++.
Born in '67,in India, he is a graduate from the Indian Institute of
Technology, Roorkee and a Masters in Computer Science from the University
of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He was a practicing architect for nearly
a decade, with experience in CAD, animation and development of office automation
tools, prior to the shift into software development. He strives to contribute
very actively to the spread of Smalltalk.
Len Lutomski, VisualWorks Lead Engineer, Cincom
Systems, USA
Len came to Smalltalk from Lisp. He began programming in Smalltalk
in the mid-1980s, working on a port of Smalltalk-80 to the 286. He now
manages the VisualWorks Protocol and Distribution Team.
Eduard Maydanik, ObjectStudio Engineer, Cincom
Systems, Germany
Eduard Maydanik is a software engineer for Cincom Smalltalk ObjectStudio
specializing on the further development of the ObjectStudio GUI system.
He started to work for Cincom in '97. Before he joined the development
group he was a QA engineer responsible for developing automatic test suites
for GUI and base classes. Prior to work for Cincom he worked most of the
time for programming geo-data information systems.
Eliot Miranda, VisualWorks Virtual Machine Lead
Engineer, Cincom Systems,
USA
Eliot has been implementing Smalltalk virtual machines for over 20
years. He's been a member of the VisualWorks engineering team since
April '95, becomming technical lead in '97. He designed and implemented
a number of key VisualWorks features such as the threaded interconnect,
immutability, and the 64boit implementation, and has helped the VisualWorks
market grow through efforts such as introducing VisualWorks Non-Commercial.
He has a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the University of York
and is a member of the ACM.
Helge Nowak, Technical Account Manager, Cincom
Systems, Germany
Helge Nowak is as Technical Account Manager the interface from the
technical side to all who are interested in Cincom Smalltalk. Apart from
consulting prospects and customers about what they can achieve with Cincom
Smalltalk he is the primary channel for his customers to product, support
and engineering management. He got infected by Smalltalk in '97 at ParcPlace/ObjectShare
where he served as Manager of the European Support Center and as a Business
Development Manager. Prior to that he gained experience in several positions
at the vendor-customer interface - on both the vendor and the customer
side.
Joseph Pelrine, Consultant and XP Guru, MetaProg
GmbH, Switzerland
MetaProg is dedicated to improving the quality of software by improving
the quality of the development process. We do this by combining the latest
and
best technology with years of experience in proven techniques. A 15-year
perfect track record of delivering customers the software they want, on-time,
in-budget, and on-spec shows that that we don't just talk the talk, we
also walk the walk.
Joseph Pelrine, is an agile pioneer, one of Europe's leading XP experts, and is Europe's first Certified ScrumMaster Practitioner and Trainer. A member of the International Assocation of Facilitators, he concentrates not only on the technical side of software development, but also on the "people" side, working at enabling customers, managers and developers to comminucate more easily and clearly with each other.
James R. Robertson, Cincom Smalltalk Product Manager,
Cincom
Systems, USA
As Cincom Smalltalk Product Manager, I am responsible for working with
sales, engineering and marketing to drive the direction of VisualWorks
and ObjectStudio. I got started in Smalltalk quite by accident in '93
I spent 9 months teaching for Booz Allen, but got lured over to ParcPlace
Niall Ross, Senior Consultant at JP Morgan Chase, United Kingdom
Kim Thomas, Cincom Smalltalk Support Manager, Cincom
Systems, USA
Kim Thomas holds a Bachelor of Science, Management Information
Systems degree. She joined Cincom in '94 as a project leader in the Professional
Services group. Since '97, Kim has been involved with ObjectStudio as
a trainer and a developer. She is currently an engineering manager who
is responsibile for Smalltalk Support for both VisualWorks and ObjectStudio
along with quality assurance responsibilities.
Andreas Tönne, Senior Consultant, Georg
Heeg eK, Germany
Andreas Tönne holds a diploma in computer science (University
of Dortmund) and a minor degree in economics. His first full body contact
with Smalltalk was in a cold computer room of the department for cs where
a friend sat in front of a graphics display, apparently painting rectangles
and text on the screen with the use of a mouse. That was '86 and since
then he has learned that Smalltalk is a bit more than just painting and
moving rectangles. Still as a student he helped Georg Heeg with the Atari
ST port of Smalltalk-80 2.3 and other projects, followed by a diploma thesis
in Smalltalk. After a few years as a researcher in logic of programming
languages and type theory at the Max-Planck-Institute for Computer Science
in Saarbrücken he again joined Georg Heeg eK, first as a consultant
and later as manager. Today he is 'Prokurist' and managing the Dortmund
office, consulting projects, product development and a few more things.
Dave Wood, Managing Director EMEA, Cincom
Systems, Belgium
At least the wheat tends to separate itself from the chaff in Smalltalk-ville. Have a look at this marvel and weep. Even I know more C# than that :)
We had a Halloween party 2 nights ago - it's an annual tradition at our house. We had a good time - way too much food, and some fun party games - a good time was had by all. I've got some pictures - not great quality, I took them with my camera phone:
The Red Queen (Off with their heads!)
A Halloween Princess
A holiday Vampire visits
The non-costume costume
Last week, I added a few links to the "menu" on this blog - look over to the right, under the Information label:
If you are looking for some of my technical articles on Cincom Smalltalk, follow this link for a list.
It's a sure sign that this industry moves forward a lot more slowly than people like to think - The Mythical Man Month was republished (as a 20 year anniversary edition) in 1995. It's still filled with relevant information. I'm sure that Fred Brooks gives the PHB (in Dilbert) a knowing chuckle each morning....
Here's the product roadmap for Cincom Smalltalk. The next release is nearly ready - it will be shipping before the end of this month. We (the Cincom Smalltalk team) are going to have a planning meeting in January, after the holiday season is over. So... now is the best time to give us feedback on that roadmap. Are we doing the right things? What about our emphasis - should we be doing more in one area and less in another? This is the kind of feedback we'll be looking for at the December Worldwide Users Conference - please attend and tell us in person! Failing that, send me mail or add a comment to this item.
In an article about wineries, Scoble gets into blogs as marketing:
NOT A SINGLE ONE had a weblog. That means they aren't napsterizing their knowledge, sharing it with others, and getting people excited about making a Yakima Valley trip in the future. And there's a lot to be excited about. Yakima Valley is every bit as beautiful as Sonoma Valley in California. And it's a LOT cheaper! A great bottle of Merlot here will cost you $8 to $20. The same quality wine in California will run $20 to $50.
It's also a lot less crowded. Even at Columbia Crest, which is a large commercial winery, we had lots of elbow room at the tasting room and didn't have to wait in line. On some weekends in Sonoma or Napa you have to fight with 30 other people just to get the attention of someone at the tasting room counter.
I told Mike to start a weblog. He didn't know what that was "I'm not a computer expert," he told me. None of the guys I talked to knew anything about blogs and their potential for marketing. So, I'm gonna work with Mike to get something started. Their winery really is special and if you're ever in Yakima, do visit it.
I went into this problem here. One of the things that's very easy to forget is how bleeding edge this blogging thing is. If you are already blogging, you probably use an aggregator. You then find lots of other interesting blogs to read. After a little while, it's easy to start thinking "everyone knows about this". The truth is, it's only just spreading out of the geek realm - the second biggest problem is the natural "it must be hard" idea that non-technical people have about web stuff.
Now, Look at what Scoble had to say about this in a follow on post:
Maryam says that she found the Murder Mystery Dinner on this Wine Yakima Valley site, but she was just surfing around looking for ideas. Five words and a link on a Web page got her to spend $130. "You know what I liked about Mike and Liz," Maryam just told me, "they are really generous."
Just think about the ROI of those five words. Where's the RSS feed? We're planning on going back for Thanksgiving. But they don't want us to have a permanent marketing relationship with them. That's lame, but common.
It's not that they don't want a permanent marketing relationship with you - it's that they have no idea what RSS is, or why it should be of interest to them. There's definitely a small-medium business market opportunity here...
I guess I'm lazy about the small stuff. The mouse that shipped with my Thinkpad went to hell awhile back - bad tracking, frayed wire... the works. I used the silly G-H thing with the buttons on the laptop for awhile - that got me a sore left hand. So anyway, I was at my local supermarket this morning, walking down the stationary/seasonal isle to fetch my daughter (who was looking over more Halloween stuff). I spotted a cheap mouse with a scroll wheel and picked it up - and wow, what a difference it makes to have smooth cursor movement again. I shouldn't put stuff off like that...
Alan Knight particpated in the platform shootout at OOPSLA last week - and eweek has a story on it. Alan got quoted a couple of times:
Knight, who was on the panel to represent an independent view, said: "I would certainly be willing to agree that both Java and Microsoft have both gone off in the wrong direction and to some extent are following each other in circles. But there are positives and negatives. The positive is they are learning from each other and gaining best practices. The negative is they are chasing each others' tails to get feature checklists matched up, regardless of value to developers."
This was good as well:
Meanwhile, Hejlsberg, widely known for his language expertise, having created Turbo Pascal, Delphi and C#, said, "I respect that there's a kernel of simplicity in the Java system that's probably long since been drowned out by lots of libraries" like so many other systems.
The independent minded Knight quipped: "It's interesting they would comment on the simplicity because that's the part I thought was missing."
The GOF Book has been out for a decade now - Giorgio Ferraris sent me a celebration picture for it (from OOPSLA)
Congratulations to Ralph Johnson, Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, and John Vlissides
LimaCat points to a possibly confusing issue with installing Cincom Smalltalk NC from the CD on Linux/Unix - he had configured things to disallow CD installs for security reasons. So, if you have trouble getting the installer to run from CD on Linux/Unix - check that first.
BottomFeeder has had a curious bug since the release of 3.7 - sometimes, when selecting an item, it would render twice in the item pane. I spoke to Michael last night, and he diagnosed and fixed the problem. It happens when you scroll an item, and then select a new one. A fix is available in the updates.
Danny Ayers asks about an nntp to RSS bridge - turns out that you don't need one. Google groups provides Atom feeds for usenet - here's the url for comp.lang.smalltalk. All you need to do is follow that pattern to subscribe to a usenet group (assuming that your tool supports Atom, that is).
Dan Fernandez points out just how truly awful candy corn is. I used to dread getting that stuff on Haloween....
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