Smalltalk Is Still the Right Choice!
“Simply possible”—a phrase that Arden Thomas, the Product Manager for Cincom Smalltalk™, has coined over his long career working with Smalltalk. Using this ideology, Arden has developed a series of value propositions he calls “The Pearls of Smalltalk.” These “pearls” exhibit the many qualities that make using this simple, yet robust, application development language something that many have chosen to use.
In the “Pearls of Smalltalk,” many attributes are covered including consistent productivity, simplicity and efficiency for resolving complex issues; pioneering and influencing software development; minimizing risk through platform portability and having success through broad application flexibility. But Arden saved the best “pearl” for last when he mentions the pure enjoyment of using it!
Recently, Fast Company published an article about a study by economists at the University of Warwick. This study found that happiness at work led to a 12% increase in productivity, while those who were unhappy were 10% less productive. The researchers said: “We find that human happiness has large and positive causal effects on productivity. Positive emotions appear to invigorate human beings.”
Each year, Stack Overflow, an online knowledge sharing community of more than 40 million monthly users, produces a developer’s survey, which they claim is “the largest and most comprehensive survey of software developers on earth.” On Wednesday, March 22, they began publishing the results of this survey, and it was exciting to see that our favorite “pearl” still rings true. The survey showed that Smalltalk came in at #2 in the Most Loved Software Languages category!
We were very happy to see this outcome and feel this reflects the enjoyment mentioned above, while showing the continuing value of Smalltalk and Cincom Smalltalk as the right choices for developers. With so many application development languages to choose from, Smalltalk and Cincom Smalltalk are still at the top of the list for the most loved languages to develop in … and we’re here to stay!