From: looi@ssfarch.attmail.com (Wan Looi)
Subject: smalltalk info & recommendation (summary - long)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 17:47:51 GMT
Organization: DHL Worldwide Express, Redwood City, Calif., USA


I'd like to thank the following people for taking the time
to reply to my questions about Smalltalk products and
recommendation:

timp@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Tim Posney)
se-bkg@lea.csc.ncsu.edu (Kyle Gene Brown)
panu@ajk.tele.fi (Panu Viljamaa)
tomb@ticipa.pac.sc.ti.com (Thomas Burns)
jeff@is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp
hasko@heeg.de (Hasko Heinecke)
se-bkg@lea.csc.ncsu.edu (Kyle Gene Brown)


SUMMARY:
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From: timp@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Tim Posney)

We have developed, and are currently developing, reasonable sized systems
in Smalltalk (>25000 lines) for the financial industry. Most of our
development has been in Smalltalk/V for Dos, but we are porting our
applications to Smalltalk/V/Win and Smalltalk/V/OS2.

I can reccomend the digitalk products (Smalltalk/V and whatever 3rd
parties they have taken over lately). The OS2 version has been claimed 
to give 2x performance over windows version. This may disappear with 
the 32 bit Windows version.

We use the following products:
        Smalltalk/V win. Cost ~USD600 /developer.  (very approximate).
        There are NO runtime fees/royalties required. (from Digitalk)

        WindowBuilder and Subpanes from Cooper and Peters. Cost approx $150,
        although we bought it as an upgrade. It is still cheap. This is a must
        have product as it will cut your screen creation time to almost 0. No
        royalties/runtime.

        AM/ST -from digitalk now I believe. This is a reasonable product
 	costing about USD500-1000 per user. (may be flexible on larger volume)

        We have not used, but are very impressed with Envy. (Don't know the
        manufacturer). It is another source code control/release control
        tool. The cost is prohibitive for us, $20000 for 5 users.

        Some SQL interface tool. There are several, spice is ok and a new
        one (from digitalk) is also getting good reviews.

Smalltalk/V and AM/ST are available for the MAC, I'm not sure about the
others. Porting simply requires redrawing the screens, the rest
of the application will run unchanged.

        We investigated ST-80 from parkplace, but the cost is just
        ridiculous, of the order of $8000/user, (ST-80, libraries and
        screen builder).

Our impression is that Smalltalk/V is by far the most common commercialy
used smalltalk package (probably since it is PC based and much cheaper
than the competition).

regards tim.


------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: panu@ajk.tele.fi (Panu Viljamaa)

 We worked with both ObjectWorks (ParcPlace) &
 Smalltalk-V (Digitalk). Unfortunately they seem
 to be the only major players. Their systems
 (= the libraries) are not as compatible with each
 other as you would like. More or less you have to
 choose one and stick to it.

 Main points in favor of each:

 Digitalk:
  - Cheap

  - No run time license, so you can actually make
    a product with little risk.

  - Less programming tools but you can (should)
    by them from 3. party.

  - Less portability between Mac & PC but better
    integration with each environment (eg: support
    for DLL:s & XCMDs).

  - GUI is exactly the native GUI of each environment


 Parc Place (Objectworks for Smalltalk)

  - Expensive.
  - Excellent programming environment.

  - Excellent binary portability
     (when using the SAME release).

  - Run time licences, but if you have big
    internal user-base, tolerable. However,
    if the system doesn't get into widespread use,
    you lose money.

  - Objectworks is akin to Windows, to run
    applications you need to buy the 'substrate'.
    Unfortunately there aren't many commercial
    packages available to run on top of it, so
    YOUR system has to justify the cost alone.

  - GUI does not quite conform to the native style
    used on each of the platforms.

Take you pick !

Panu


------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: tomb@ticipa.pac.sc.ti.com (Thomas Burns)

           We worked with both ObjectWorks (ParcPlace) &
    Smalltalk-V (Digitalk). Unfortunately they seem
    to be the only major players. Their systems
    (= the libraries) are not as compatible with each
    other as you would like. More or less you have to
    choose one and stick to it.

I take issue here.  We are using V/286 and OTI's V/Embedded along with
St80 for a production machine control system.  We have two distinct
flavors of the system where in one the machine control is in V and the
UI in 80, and the other has both machine control and UI coded in an
St80 environment.  The V and 80 machine control images use the same
classes with minor subclassing to define specific behavior appropriate
for each system (NOT each VM).

To top it all off, we use our own remote object communications package
and object storage/retrieval system to actively communicate between
the V and 80 systems.  Obviously, for such communication to be valid
then there must be a high degree of commonality between the systems or
an object built in ST/V (for example) will have problems being
reconstructed in St80 due to any number of reasons including instance
variable reordering or different numbers of inst vars in each image.

There are two distinct points where ST/V and St80 are at odds:
- GUI (MVC vs. MPD)
- Exception handling (and V's native lack of it)

If your code is highly GUI dependent then you might be in trouble.
From what I understand you're even in trouble between different V
platforms.  It should be noted that with a great deal of care and
careful subclassing, V and 80 code can be made very similar even in
the GUI world - if you create panes in each platform that subclass
from the native panes.  These 'translator' panes would provide a
common interface, although it would probably pretty much preclude the
use of a 'View' in St80, not to mention panes more complex than the
standard list and text panes.

We are using ENVY from OTI which allows porting between code databases
(one for V and one for 80) and handles expressions to load 80-specific
or V-specific code as appropriate for the cases where divergence is
necessary.  We did have to implement some missing protocols on each of
the platforms to get true commonality.  Things like
Character>>asLowerCase in V and #asLowercase in 80, or in V it's a
MetaClass and 80 has a Metaclass.

As far as the pros and cons of each platform, I would generally agree.
The only additional comment I would make is that if you are a student
you can get St80 relatively cheaply.

tom


------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: jeff@is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp

I am not sure exactly what you are looking for.  Are you looking for a
Smalltalk system or some sort of programs that are written in
Smalltalk.  If you are looking for a Smalltalk system that runs on
both the PC and the Mac in which you can write *your* software *and*
you want good portability there is only one choice:  ParcPlace
ObjectsWorks/Smalltalk.  It is not that it is the best choice, it is
the *only* choice.  There are no other vendors.  I don't know much
about points #4 and #5.  1, 2 and 3 are reasonable.

If you are doing a largish application with several programmers then
you should also consider some sort of configuration management and
version control system.  Object Technology International (OTI) has a
product called ENVY/Developer which does all of these things and more.
It is the only industrial strength system like this available for
ParcPlace Smalltalk.  Note that I work for the company so I am not
completely unbiased.  For more info on ENVy?Developer send a request
to info@oti.on.ca

Good luck


------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: se-bkg@lea.csc.ncsu.edu (Kyle Gene Brown)

Why don't you give us a call at Knowledge Systems.  We've had more
experience with writing cross-platform portable Smalltalk systems than
any other company that I'm aware of.

In addition, we offer a full range of consulting and training services,a
s well as a product suite for Smalltalk/V Windows and Smalltalk/V PM
products.

Our number is (919) 481-4000

Kyle Brown

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