Cincom Smalltalk Digest: March Edition

Welcome to the March 2023 edition of the Cincom Smalltalk Digest. In this edition, we will highlight:

CUSTOMERS and PARTNERS

• Have You Visited the Cincom Discovery Zone Yet?
• How Do You File New Support Cases?

BEGINNERS, FREELANCERS and DEVELOPERS

• Why Can’t I Use the Latest Apple OS (MacOS) with the PUL?
• What Is the Hidden Gems Screencast Series and Why Is It Valuable?
• How Can You Recover Your Starter Image?
• FAQ: Why Was the NTLM Framework Removed from Cincom Smalltalk?
• Attention Smalltalkers: Cincom Is Looking for You!

CUSTOMERS and PARTNERS

Have You Visited the Cincom Discovery Zone Yet?

We strive to keep our customers and partners up to date on the valuable services that our experienced consulting services professionals provide. We established The Cincom Discovery Zone for Customer and Partner Services on our website to better communicate those opportunities. This section includes detailed descriptions of available services like product upgrades, performance enhancements, mentoring, troubleshooting, migrations, proofs of concept and more.

Maximizing productivity and efficiency is critical right now as businesses strive not only to survive but also to maintain revenue streams and creatively seek growth opportunities. Our top priority is to help our customers and partners succeed, and our team has decades of experience in uncovering hidden opportunities for growth, profit, value and success in your company. The Cincom Consulting Services team can assist you with your needs.

• To discover new potential for your business and learn how our team can help you uncover it, check out the Cincom Discovery Zone for Customer and Partner Services here.

How Do You File New Support Cases?

Need to file a new support case? For quick access to Cincom Smalltalk Support, please take note of this list:

• Visit Cincom SupportWeb® for immediate support.
• Email HelpNA@cincom.com and EuroTSC@cincom.com to file new support cases.

Reach out to the Cincom Smalltalk Product Team at CSSTARTeam@cincom.com if you have any further questions or comments.

Additional links:

• Cincom Support Levels
• Cincom Smalltalk Resolutions Portal

BEGINNERS, FREELANCERS and DEVELOPERS

Why Can’t I Use the Latest Apple OS (MacOS) with the PUL?

As has been explained on several other FAQs on our website, the current Personal Use License of Cincom Smalltalk (which is Cincom® ObjectStudio® 8.9 and Cincom® VisualWorks® 8.3) does not work with the latest Apple OS (MacOS). Only current versions of Cincom Smalltalk (9.x and above) will work on recent Apple operating systems.

The current version of Cincom Smalltalk is only available to current customers and partners. If you require the latest version to work with the current MacOS, please reach out to the Cincom Smalltalk STAR Team and we will get you started on your customer journey.

What Is the Hidden Gems Screencast Series and Why Is It Valuable?

The Hidden Gems screencast series is well known to long-time readers of the Cincom Smalltalk Digest. Those who are new to Smalltalk or Cincom Smalltalk may be unaware of what this series is or how it can benefit their developer path. Let’s look more closely at what these instructional tutorial videos are all about.

Arden Thomas created the Hidden Gems screencast series to share shortcuts, tips and techniques that may help others learn or get started with Cincom Smalltalk. Arden shares how he uses various Cincom Smalltalk components, as well as features that he considers “hidden gems” for his own productivity, in these screencasts.

You can hear more details directly from Arden in this Introduction to Hidden Gems.

Additionally, Suzanne Fortman shares her thoughts on the impact of these videos in “What Are the Benefits of Hidden Gems?”

This screencast series is a growing collection of valuable nuggets compiled by Arden over the course of several years. At the time of writing, the list has surpassed 80 items, with more in the works for 2023 (see below for the most recent!). To make viewing the series easier, we’ve divided it into the following manageable and understandable subcategories:

• Tools Series – The Tools Series explores some tools and product features that developers should find useful. 
• Techniques Series – The Technique Series shows various techniques of how to accomplish or solve different tasks from automating image build to creating a custom parser. 
• ValueModel Series – The ValueModel Series shows the principles, capabilities and use of the powerful ValueModel framework.
• DomainMaster Series – The DomainMaster Series introduces an application framework that leverages the principles of the ValueModel to make application development easier, faster, capable and reliable.  
• Persistence Series – The Persistence Series shows multiple techniques of how to save and load objects to disk, where using a full database might be overkill or unwieldy.
• Collections Series – The Collections Series shows some lesser-known collections that may be beneficial for your collections toolbox. 

How Can You Recover Your Starter Image?

The latest Hidden Gems screencast, Recovering Your Starter Image, will discuss some best practices that are useful to newer users and note some new features that new and longtime users can benefit from.

This video tutorial will discuss how to restore a clean “starter” image in case you have accidentally modified it.

Watch this screencast, which is part of the Techniques Series, below or click here.

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

FAQ: Why Was the NTLM Framework Removed from Cincom Smalltalk?

Some Cincom Smalltalk users have noted that the NTLM framework was removed from the product and wondered why. The reason for the removal of NTLM was that Microsoft no longer recommends NTLM in applications:

“Implementers should be aware that NTLM does not support any recent cryptographic methods, such as AES or SHA-256. It uses cyclic redundancy check (CRC) or message digest algorithms (RFC1321) for integrity, and it uses RC4 for encryption. Deriving a key from a password is as specified in RFC1320 and FIPS46-2. Therefore, applications are generally advised not to use NTLM.”

Currently, supported AUTH schemes are:

• LOGIN
• OAuthBearer
• PLAIN

We recommend using all of them over a secure connection.

Attention Smalltalkers: Cincom Is Looking for You!

Cincom is looking for several Smalltalk developers to join its global engineering team to further the development of Cincom Smalltalk.

We have several job openings, and some of the required skills are as follows:

• A passion for and experience with Smalltalk (Cincom Smalltalk experience is a plus.)
• Experience with API calls and platform libraries on various operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix)
• Graphical User Interface (GUI) experience
• A “can-do” attitude
• Ability to work individually and in a distributed team environment

If you are a software engineer who wants to live wherever you want and take your rewarding career with you, Cincom could be the place for you! Any software engineer who is interested in joining a product group that is ready to share Smalltalk with the world through clean code, cool campaigns and much more, should send their resume/CV and cover letter, as well as salary requirements, to Suzanne Fortman.