Cincom Smalltalk vs. Visual Studio

• Was built in a research lab by a select group.
• Was built over a decade, with no product pressures.
• Had the goal of making computing easy for people.
• The research lab’s work has influenced and shaped modern computing.

• It is used for its C# language (and others).
• Used for Windows .NET platform.
• Used to develop console, graphical UI apps, Windows
• Forms apps, web sites, web apps and web services in native and managed code.
• It is object oriented.
• It has C-like syntax for familiarity.
• Portable on many platform.
• CLI (Common Language Infrastructure).
• CLR (Common Language Runtime).
• Uses JIT (Just-in-time compilation).

• Enjoyment – Cincom Smalltalk is pure Object­-Oriented. Developers achieve more and enjoy doing it.
  • Better morale and employee retention.
  • Developers have said, “They did not get object­-oriented programming, until they learned Smalltalk.”
  • Developers feel more capable in any object-oriented language, after having learned Smalltalk.
• Maintainability – Cincom Smalltalk can handle vast changes quickly and easily, as evidenced by Cincom Smalltalk client, JPMorgan – complex derivatives.
• Scalability – Cincom Smalltalk can scale tremendously, as seen by Cincom Smalltalk client, EZ Board – has 30 million users.
• Consistency – Cincom Smalltalk is incredibly robust and reliable, as demonstrated by Cincom Smalltalk client, Money Markets System – $6 billion in trades per day.
• Learning curve – Cincom Smalltalk is faster and easier to learn.
• Productivity – Cincom Smalltalk is more productive than any other mainstream language.
• Portability – developers using Cincom Smalltalk can develop on their favorite platform and then deploy to any other platform with no changes.
• Productivity – Cincom Smalltalk programmers typically solve a given problem faster and write one­third to one­half of code produced by programmers using other languages. This enables Cincom Smalltalk to be a very productive and strong prototyping tool.

• Widely used.
• Language interoperability (on Windows platform).
• Plug-ins extensions well supported to extend functionality (In the form of add-ins, packages and macros).
• Learning curve is easier for beginner – Best guidance
• Easy to use.
• Interactive development environment.
• Easy WYSIWYG GUI development
• IDE refactoring (Refactoring is the process of changing a software system in such a way that it does not alter the external behavior of the code yet improves its internal structure.*) is good.

Visual Studio’s Weaknesses:

• Visual Studio does not support any programming language directly, but does so by the use of a plug-in called Language Service.
• Visual Studio lacks in quick file retrieval.
• Portability could be an issue. There are supporters who claim, “Write once, run anywhere” and detractors who say. “Write once, debug anywhere.”
• Visual Studio (2008) IDE is sometimes described as a “feature bloated” and overwhelming to new users.
• Visual Studio’s Windows Presentation Foundation (WTP) is questionable as to its suitability for line-of-business applications.
• Lacks object-oriented purity.
  • - Primitive types are not objects.
  • - Autoboxing is made to solve this but adds complexity.
• May require .Net framework installation in order to run applications.