Recommendation: Using Cincom Smalltalk as a Low-Risk, High-Value Development Tool
Cincom is a market leader in commercial Smalltalk. Whatever type of application is required, the Cincom Smalltalk suite of tools assists users in creating value with the least amount of risk and the quickest return on investment.
What provides the high value of Smalltalk? Being a long-time Smalltalker, Arden Thomas, the Product Manager for Cincom Smalltalk, says:
“Smalltalk had a massive research and development investment in time, iterations and careful development, to create a language that is easier to use and understand. Smalltalk generally allows solving a problem more succinctly and clearly, which allows less code to solve a problem.
“Less and clearer code is easier to understand and maintain, and costs less over the life cycle of a software application. The research and development investment in Smalltalk is likely unrivaled by any other language.”
To give an illustration of this, Arden provides this quote and explanation:
“In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.”
– Benjamin Graham
Arden loves this quote because it gives a great analogy for why Smalltalk is still successful and will continue to be used in application development well into the future. In the quote, Graham relates the short term of the stock market to be like a popularity contest. The price of stocks could rapidly change, while the value of the stock remains the same. This could be from traders coming in and moving the market, the stock being manipulated in the short term or people simply chasing fads.
In the long term, the market tends to gain value due to economic growth and other factors, similar to a weighing machine. Measuring stocks over longer periods of time weeds out the fads, leaving the actual price of the stock and reflecting the true value of the company. Investors should always avoid moving on short-term fads. Eventually, these fads fade, and the true value of the stock is what remains.
The same holds true for Smalltalk. Over time, even though challenged by many other languages, the productivity and value of Smalltalk wins out.