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Smalltalk Digest: July Edition

Posted on by Author Jeremy Jordan in Categories Cincom Smalltalk Digest Newsletter Archive

Smalltalk Digest

Welcome to the July 2020 edition of the Cincom Smalltalk™ Digest.  In this valuable edition themed around productivity, we will talk about the following:

CUSTOMERS and PARTNERS

When it’s business as (un)usual, you can still maintain your path to revenue with Cincom. #InThisTogether

  • How Can Cincom Help Customers and Partners with Productivity?
  • How Can Cincom SupportWeb® Help Cincom Smalltalk Customers and Partners Be More Productive?
  • In What Ways Does Cincom Communicate with Customers and Partners?

BEGINNERS, FREELANCERS and DEVELOPERS

  • How Can New Users Easily Learn Cincom Smalltalk?
  • NEW Hidden Gems Screencast: Practical Pragmas and Productivity
  • Are You Ready to Start Your Journey with Cincom Smalltalk?
  • Looking for Online Smalltalk Events to Attend?
  • FAQ of the Month: Are there tutorials or instructions on how to integrate Cincom® VisualWorks® with Jenkins?
  • Where Can I Find Cincom Smalltalk Product Resources?

Snippets for these articles can be found below:

CUSTOMERS and PARTNERS

How Can Cincom Help Customers and Partners with Productivity?

Umair Haque, the author of Betterness: Economics for Humans and the director of Havas Media Labs, says that productivity is often mislabeled as making stuff cheaper. In reality, Umair correctly states that productivity should be more about “making stuff better.”

To add more, Aytekin Tank, the Entrepreneur Leadership Network VIP at Entrepreneur.com, says the following in his article, “Why Founders Should Focus on Productivity Instead of Efficiency: Productivity is a way to accomplish more of what matters in your business”:

“While efficiency means doing more with less, productivity is about doing more with the same … and it’s a pursuit grounded in quality. After all, who cares whether you cross four extra tasks off your to-do list, if those activities don’t move the needle for your business? An effective morning routine or work schedule should help you to do more of what really matters. That’s why I believe founders and CEOs should focus on productivity … .”

In the “Pearls of Smalltalk,” Arden Thomas, the Cincom Smalltalk Product Manager, lists “productivity” as the first pearl on the list, citing that studies and comparisons show Cincom Smalltalk being consistently more productive than any other mainstream programming language. 

Our customers and partners know about this productivity already, but as Umair says above, maybe there is “better stuff” we can help with? The Cincom Smalltalk group makes the success of our customers and partners our main priority. Our Services team has decades of experience with productivity, helping customers and partners increase their profitability and success, adding value to their applications and their businesses through:

  • Product Upgrades
  • Performance Enhancements
  • Proofs of Concepts
  • Migrations
  • Mentoring
  • Troubleshooting

Does this interest you?  See more details, and learn how we can help “make stuff better” here.

Cincom Discovery Zone for Customer and Partner Services

How Can Cincom SupportWeb Help Cincom Smalltalk Customers and Partners Be More Productive?

In last month’s Cincom Smalltalk Digest, we touched on the Cincom Smalltalk Resolutions newsletter and how it adds value for our customers and partners. As we focus on productivity this month, we want to remind our customers and partners about their ability to use Cincom SupportWeb to solve issues that may come up during development.

In the insightful video below, listen to Kimberly Thomas, the Director of Global Product Support for Cincom, describe some helpful features of SupportWeb:

  • Information at your fingertips – On the main page, customers and partners will be given an option to get a monthly technical status report. Additionally, customers and partners can see other special announcements about new services or offerings that have come available through Cincom Support.
  • Easily check the status of cases – A quick way for customers and partners to see their open and closed cases, as well as solutions that may already be available to them.
  • Why we request a test case – Allows Cincom Support to better understand the problem a customer or partner is having by helping Support re-create the problem in our own environment. These test cases also help define the problem properly to ascertain if Support is on the same page as the issue a customer or partner is having. Test cases also allow Cincom Support to test the customer or partner issue when future releases come out to ensure that things are still working properly.

See all the details by watching this video here.

In What Ways Does Cincom Communicate with Customers and Partners?

Cincom plays a significant leadership role not only in the Smalltalk community but also in providing commercial Smalltalk to customers and partners around the world. Because of this, it’s imperative that we consistently communicate with our customers and partners. This helps our users understand what tools and resources are provided through Cincom, as well as ways Cincom Smalltalk can be used for productivity. 

From upgrading products to the current release of Cincom Smalltalk Version 9, promoting customer and partner offerings for resale and adding value for their company, to customer programs and services, tutorials, videos and helpful newsletters like the Cincom Smalltalk Resolutions newsletter, we have all of our resources, programs and product information listed here.

BEGINNERS, FREELANCERS, and DEVELOPERS

How Can New Users Easily Learn Cincom Smalltalk?

As new users begin their journey with Cincom Smalltalk, it’s important to know where to start and have a helpful guide along the way. That’s why we’ve put together a comprehensive list of online video tutorials that help beginners use our products right away.

Cincom Smalltalk product tutorials give examples with live coding and are designed to help users become productive with the Cincom Smalltalk suite of products. 

Our tutorials are divided into three sections:

  • Common Tools – Many of the tools used for development in Cincom® ObjectStudio® and Cincom VisualWorks are now commonly shared through the Cincom Smalltalk Foundation, making some of our tutorials applicable for either product.
  • Cincom ObjectStudio – These tutorials demonstrate various steps in the installation and first usage of ObjectStudio. ObjectStudio is an ideal solution for developing custom applications for Windows®. Known as the “business person’s thinking tool” and based on the powerful Smalltalk language, ObjectStudio provides a powerhouse development environment, which is necessary to create innovative applications that capture complex business models and processes.
  • Cincom VisualWorks – Similar to the ObjectStudio videos, these tutorials demonstrate various steps in the installation and first usage of VisualWorks. VisualWorks is the premiere Smalltalk environment and is an ideal solution for enterprise-class, multilingual, cross-platform application development and allows users to build with superior development tools.

To begin watching these tutorials, click here.

https://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/main/community/resources/smalltalk-product-tutorials/

NEW Hidden Gems Screencast: Practical Pragmas and Productivity

Arden Thomas, the Cincom Smalltalk Product Manager, started the Hidden Gems screencast series to share shortcuts, tips and techniques that might make it easier for others to use or jumpstart their Cincom Smalltalk usage. In these screencasts, Arden shares how he uses various components of Cincom Smalltalk, as well as features that he uses for his own productivity that he considers “hidden gems.”

In this edition of the Digest, we’ve given several examples of how Cincom Smalltalk can help customers, partners and users with this productivity. This month’s Hidden Gems screencast is an introduction to pragmas.

The idea for this screencast came when a Cincom Smalltalk engineer suggested a Hidden Gems on “pragmas,” which was the seed idea. Arden then added to that idea with the thought about productivity and wanting to show a practical use of pragmas, combined with wanting a faster way to launch browser subsets that are frequently used in development. A “pragma” allows you to annotate a method with declarative metadata.
 
In this new Hidden Gems screencast, we will:
  1. Discuss what pragmas are
  2. Build some productivity tools, and make them available in the launcher, using pragmas
  3. Give some other tool tips (GHPragmaSender, a tool in Contributed Components on our website):
    • GHPragmaSender can be found in the Contributed/Heeg directory as well as the public repository.
    • GHPragmaSender allows you to search for senders and implementers of pragmas, just as you do with methods.

Please send comments, questions and suggestions to the Cincom Smalltalk Product Team at CSSTARTeam@cincom.com. 

Watch over 50 other Hidden Gems screencasts in our video archive here.

https://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/main/community/resources/videos/

Are You Ready to Start Your Journey with Cincom Smalltalk?

As you’ve read through this newsletter, you’ve seen several examples of how Cincom Smalltalk makes a difference for our customers, partners and users through productivity.  There are other benefits to using Cincom Smalltalk, such as simplicity, portability and enjoyment.

Here’s your chance to start your journey and begin experiencing these benefits for yourself. Depending on your needs, there are two ways you can start today:

Try Cincom Smalltalk ─ A great opportunity to try Smalltalk! The Personal Use License of Cincom Smalltalk makes it easy for someone to learn and become familiar with our technology.  The Personal Use License is free for you to use for your own private use.

Curious? Click here to start exploring Cincom Smalltalk and all that it can do for you.

TRY: Personal Use License Version

Buy Cincom Smalltalk ─ A great opportunity to take your idea to the next level and create your own business! This popular program is an affordable investment of only $1,000 that was created to give you a low-cost opportunity to partner with Cincom and receive all the benefits of being a customer. As a Cincom Smalltalk customer, you receive:

  1. Access to the full products the current release (Cincom Smalltalk Version 9) for 1 year/12 months.
  2. Full support for the products during the 1 year/12 months.
  3. Your partnership with Cincom doesn’t have to end when the 1 year/12 month REV Program expires.  You can carry over your partnership and continue on with your customer benefits. Contact the Cincom Smalltalk STAR Team to learn how.

Interested? Join other entrepreneurs and get started in this very popular program today! Click here to start your partnership for only $1,000.

REV Up Your Business with Cincom Smalltalk™

Looking for Online Smalltalk Events to Attend?

It’s clear that 2020 will go down as one of the most unpredictable years in recent history. This unpredictability has taken a toll on many things in our shared society, including in-person events.  By now, the evidence is mounting that traveling to a venue and attending a live event will be difficult to do throughout the remainder of this calendar year.

As society continues to adapt to these global changes and the circumstances that accompany them, most events now have altered their plans and are either being postponed or going virtual.  If you are looking to attend one of these upcoming Smalltalk events online, please note the changes below:

You can monitor other future meetups and conferences, as well as any changes to their scheduling, on our Events page here.

https://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/main/events/

FAQ of the Month: Are there tutorials or instructions on how to integrate Cincom VisualWorks with Jenkins?

For assistance on integrating Cincom VisualWorks with Jenkins, please view these links:

There is only contributed work available for this as it is not provided by Cincom. Also, there are Jenkins-related packages on the Cincom Smalltalk Store Repository. One is called “Jenkins Automation.”

For other frequently asked questions, visit our FAQs section where we answer “How do I…?” and other questions here.

Where Can I Find Cincom Smalltalk Product Resources?

Earlier, we referenced the Cincom Smalltalk product tutorials and the Cincom Smalltalk Store Repository, but those aren’t the only resources we have available on our website.  Whether you are new to Cincom Smalltalk or a seasoned veteran, this section will be a handy guide to the popular resources we currently have available:

Download Center

https://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/main/community/resources/videos/

https://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/main/community/resources/presentations/

Reserved NameSpaces

Cincom Smalltalk Contributed Components

 

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