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Cincom Smalltalk™ Digest: April Edition

Smalltalk Digest

The Cincom Smalltalk Digest is a monthly publication that shares news, updates and resources with our customers, partners and users. This month’s newsletter includes the following:

CUSTOMERS and PARTNERS

  • Cincom® ObjectStudio® 9.2 and Cincom® VisualWorks® 9.2 Are Here!
  • What Is the Cincom Smalltalk Partner Promotion Program?

BEGINNERS, FREELANCERS and DEVELOPERS

  • How Does Cincom Smalltalk Help JPMorgan Consistently Beat Their Competition?
  • What Is a Citizen Developer?
  • How Can Cincom Smalltalk Enable Citizen Development?
  • What “No-Code Low-Code” Tools Are Found in Cincom Smalltalk?
  • What Is the Fifteen Puzzle Application?
  • What Are Other Ways to Use Cincom Smalltalk to Build Gaming Apps?

CUSTOMERS and PARTNERS

This section of the Cincom Smalltalk Digest is dedicated to our valued customers and partners.

Cincom ObjectStudio 9.2 and Cincom VisualWorks 9.2 Are Here!

If you missed the announcement last month, we are excited to share with our valued customers and partners the current version of Cincom Smalltalk. This release includes the releases of Cincom ObjectStudio 9.2 and Cincom VisualWorks 9.2.

Cincom is the market leader in commercial Smalltalk. Cincom Smalltalk enhances the value and ease-of-use of tools for enterprise-level client and web applications. Developers who are looking for custom Windows® applications will find ObjectStudio as the ideal choice. When cross-platform custom application development is required, VisualWorks is the perfect solution. 

The Cincom Smalltalk Foundation and the core libraries are shared by ObjectStudio and VisualWorks. This means that foundation enhancements benefit both products. It is worth noting that beginning with release 9.0, ObjectStudio and VisualWorks now share a release number. Customers and Cincom can discuss, compare and track both products because they share a foundation of work. 

  • Our valued customers and partners may order the newest release through our Customer Product Request Form here.
    NOTE: Should you have any questions or problems accessing the request form, please contact your Sales Account Manager or Cincom Smalltalk Support.
  • Learn more about Cincom Smalltalk 9.2 here.

What Is the Cincom Smalltalk Partner Promotion Program?

We have a diverse group of customers and partners from a broad spectrum of industries. Some have been partnering with us for 20, 25 and even 30 years while others have joined us recently through our REV Program. As Cincom Smalltalk Program Director, Suzanne Fortman, has said, “Whether you’ve been using Cincom Smalltalk for days or decades,” our customers and partners have stories about their success.

Forbes explains that marketing connects customers to the right product and helps “people throughout a company think from the outside-in about what is being offered, [and] convey its value in customer-centric ways. …” 

In a recent Harvard Business Review, business-school professors, Thomas Steenburgh and Michael Ahearne, said, “Senior leaders have great confidence in their ability to develop innovations but not in their ability to commercialize them.”

Marketing your product or service can be a difficult task.

  • Businesses spend so much time and resources on developing their products or services that marketing to prospects often gets overlooked, not prioritized nor budgeted for.
  • Business leaders may not know how to find the right prospects for their offerings nor the best way to communicate to their prospects once they are identified.
  • The cost of marketing products and services can often be more than a business can afford.

Marketing is a critical element in the success of any business; that’s why the Cincom Smalltalk Partner Promotion program was created. We make this process quick and easy to help give more exposure and brand awareness to our customers and partners without taking up valuable time that could be used elsewhere.

  • To see this simple, three-step process for yourself, click here.

BEGINNERS, FREELANCERS and DEVELOPERS

This section of the Cincom Smalltalk Digest is devoted to new Smalltalkers, freelancers and seasoned developers, providing informative articles and specific Smalltalk examples for learning new skills or honing existing ones using Cincom Smalltalk.

How Does Cincom Smalltalk Help JPMorgan Consistently Beat Their Competition?

JPMorgan Chase is a leading financial services firm serving capital markets throughout the world. With assets of $2.45 trillion and a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, capabilities include investment banking, research, private equities, investment management, private banking and treasury and security services.

Using Cincom Smalltalk, JPMorgan developed Kapital, the world’s most advanced financial risk management and pricing system that supports Interest Rate Hybrids and Credit Hybrids trades. It empowers hybrid derivative businesses to trade large volumes of highly complex financial instruments with ease and simplicity.

JPMorgan chose Cincom VisualWorks over other mainstream development languages, including Java. 

“A key factor that has justified using Cincom Smalltalk, above and beyond the technical capabilities that it offers, is the productivity that it has delivered. … We have estimated that if we had built Kapital in another language, such as Java, we would require at least three times the amount of resources to develop and maintain the application.”

Using Cincom VisualWorks to develop Kapital, JPMorgan met the challenge of finding a development environment that deals with the complexity of its derivative products, delivers unparalleled productivity to stay ahead of the competition and offers the scalability to support extremely high trading volumes.

  • Read more about how Cincom Smalltalk helps JPMorgan beat its competition here.

What is a Citizen Developer?

According to Gartner, a citizen developer is someone who “creates application capabilities for consumption by themselves or others, using tools that are not actively forbidden by IT or business units.” Gartner also wisely points out that citizen developers are not “a persona, not a title or targeted role. They report to a business unit or function other than IT.”

Citizen development enables non- or semi-technical workers to become a type of software developer that creates business tools or applications. These citizen developer creations can be used to meet a user’s specific needs and improve a company’s operational efficiency.

There has been massive growth in this arena over the past decade as “no-code” and “low-code” development tools have grown and matured. These tools enable non-technical users to create applications as soon as ideas emerge, and their benefits can grow exponentially when combined with advanced data analytics.

Are you a citizen developer?  Do you have citizen developers in your business?

  • To hear a Cincom Smalltalk citizen developer story, click here.
  • To read how Cincom Smalltalk can be used for citizen development, click here.
  • To learn about “No-Code Low-Code” tools available in Cincom Smalltalk, click here.

How Can Cincom Smalltalk Enable Citizen Development?

More and more companies are engaging citizen development in their organizations. Even a company the size of JPMorgan hints at citizen development:

“… The key is that our development resources do not necessarily need to be Smalltalk ‘experts.’ …”

If you have someone in your company who is interested in exploring the world of citizen development, we have three options to help them get started:

  • The Cincom Smalltalk Quick Start Guide to Object-Oriented Programming in Smalltalk– For citizen developers who are new to object-oriented programming or those who have always wanted to try the magic of Smalltalk but don’t have lots of time to invest, we are introducing a Smalltalk “Quick Start” guide. This gives you most of what you need to know to get up and running, create and talk to objects and even build a fun, interactive, graphic game in little time!
  • The CST PUL Program– This program gives citizen developers the freedom to evaluate our products before deciding that Cincom Smalltalk is the right fit for their business or project needs.
  • The CST REV 9.2 Program– This program is a bridge between the CST PUL Program and full licensing. The REV 9.2 Program is only available for purchase on our website. This affordable, $1,000 investment gives citizen developers an entry into a connection with the Cincom platform.

What “No-Code Low-Code” Tools are Found in Cincom Smalltalk?

If you are looking for a “No-Code Low-Code” tool, the Cincom ObjectStudio Modeling and Mapping Tool is a great example. Cincom ObjectStudio is an ideal solution for developing custom applications for Windows®.

Known as the “business analyst’s thinking tool,” and based on object-oriented programming in Smalltalk, ObjectStudio provides a powerhouse development environment, which is necessary to create innovative applications that capture complex business models and processes.

Two powerful components found in ObjectStudio are the Modeling and Mapping Tools. These components can:

  • Help citizen developers quickly write applications for their business needs.
  • Create a proof of concept or visual aid in which citizen developers and Marketing can communicate.
  • Help citizen developers build a visual walkthrough of the entire application—from the front to the back end.
  • Help citizen developers and business leaders be on the same page before months of development time and money are spent on writing the actual application.
  • Show how quickly the application can be built, what can be built on to it or even that the idea may not be ready yet.
  • Give business owners more clarity on how to proceed with the project.

From citizen developers and business owners to investors and customers, the Modeling and Mapping Tools can show what’s possible with the application.

  • You can find tutorial videos, demonstrations and more information about the Modeling and Mapping Tools here.

In addition, we published a recent Hidden Gems Screencast that shows you a tool that gives you “No-Code” access to data with the Smalltalk CSVDataExplorer. “Low-Code” comes into effect if you want to customize the code that the tool provides.

  • Watch this Hidden Gems Screencast here.

What is the Fifteen Puzzle Application?

The Hidden Gems Screencast series was created for developers who are passionate about using Cincom Smalltalk. These screencasts give the viewer live coding examples while sharing valuable insight into the product and informing them about things they may not know.

This month’s new Hidden Gems Screencast demonstrates the design and construction of the Fifteen Puzzle application built in Smalltalk. We use this application as a fun and fast way to learn object-oriented programming and Smalltalk in our new “Quick-Start Guide.”

As an experienced Smalltalker, you may appreciate how clean, simple and small the implementation is for this application. As an experienced Smalltalk developer, you may have colleagues and friends who you wish could learn and experience the power of Smalltalk. Send them here: https://bit.ly/OOP-Quick-Start-Guide.

If you have questions, comments or ideas for other Smalltalk examples or suggestions for future Hidden Gems, please email the Cincom Smalltalk Product Team at CSSTARTeam@cincom.com.

What Are Other Ways to Use Cincom Smalltalk to Build Gaming Apps?

According to Investopedia, the gaming industry generated $155 billion in revenue in 2020. Analysts predict that the industry will generate more than $260 billion in revenue by 2025.

Further, Statista says that mobile-games revenue in the United States reached a record 10.73 billion US dollars in 2020, and the number of U.S. mobile video game users is now higher than ever, thanks to a wave of technological advancements, digital innovation and nationwide lockdowns amidst the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Because of this fast-growing market, many are searching for the best way to develop games by seeking to find development environments that will afford the most powerful tools for gaming creation.

To see a few examples of how Cincom Smalltalk can be used to build gaming apps, click here.