5 ms·

This is kind of an offtopic question, but regardless: Is there any application written in smalltalk in the debian repository? (or any other linux distro)

monocasa 8y ago
The only people I've heard of using Smalltalk at all other than in dogfood situations are people using Gemstone. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemstone_(database) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemstone_(database)
- spooneybarger 8y ago
  I know of a number of smaller business that are "as a service" that are built using Smalltalk.
- dunham 8y ago
  Way back in the day, "DabbleDB" was written in Smalltalk. (It was a Zenkit/Airtable type web app.) If I remember right, they had a separate image per customer and it took a moment to bring up the VM if hadn't been to the site in a while.
  - e12e 8y ago
    Sadly they got acqu-hired by twitter - and judging by some (not bad, just in lack of enthusiasm) comments, I got a sense that they sold dabbledb at peak technical/architectural debt... It's a bit sad, I appeared to be a Google sheets meets office 365 flows on steroids before either was any good: https://youtu.be/6wZmYMWKLkY https://youtu.be/6wZmYMWKLkY (i think that's from 2006 or so, archive.org has more info, but it's a bit painful to navigate on mobile) Avi Bryant comments on hn from time to time: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=avibryant https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=avibryant As I understand it, each customer got an image/vm - and data was just stored as Smalltalk objects. It'd been interesting to see where they might have gone if they coupled the dabbledb front end with gemstone/s.
- luser1024 8y ago
  Gemstone provides a database. There are very large Smalltalk based applications that run using Gemstone as the backing database[1] . These applications are, for the most part, very large in-house applications that don't have much external visibility. [1] http://seaside.gemtalksystems.com/docs/OOCL_SuccessStory.pdf http://seaside.gemtalksystems.com/docs/OOCL_SuccessStory.pdf
- gaius 8y ago
  JPMorgan have a fairly serious Smalltalk app http://www.cincom.com/pdf/CS040819-1.pdf http://www.cincom.com/pdf/CS040819-1.pdf However, only one. Make of that what you will.
  - ben-coman 8y ago
    They only have on app because Smalltalk if agile enough they build everything they need into it as the need arises - and this has been maintained over many years.
- ben-coman 8y ago
  Gemstone is not "using" Smalltalk. Gemstone "is-a" Smalltalk. Here are commercial companies that believe in Pharo (in the money on the table way of measuring belief) http://consortium.pharo.org/ http://consortium.pharo.org/
  - flubert 8y ago
    Interesting. So am I right in assuming there are: - 9 bronze level (1k Euro/year) - 5 silver level (2k Euro/year) - 11 gold level (4k Euro/year) - 5 platinum level (8k Euro/year) ...members of the consortium (based on the color of the surround on the member label/icon)? So that would be ~103,000 Euro per year? Or is that signifying a one-time contribution (vs. recurring annual)? It doesn't look like there has been a consortium report published since 2015: http://consortium.pharo.org/web/reports http://consortium.pharo.org/web/reports ...any ideas what that means? (i.e. they stopped publishing them for privacy reasons, the consortium no longer has meetings, the consortium is no longer active, etc.?) Any ideas on what projects they are currently funding, and how many man-hours of programmer time are being purchased for Pharo in 2018?
    - ben-coman 8y ago
      Its a recurring fee. Of course, its dependent on members feeling they are getting value for money and continuing each year. The platinum level was only recently created. I don't know what it means that there is not later reports. The consortium is definitely active. It arose because open source software is about people scratching an itch, and often the focus is on the fun stuff and not on the boring, difficult, dirty engineering required to make a product reliable and successful (e.g. operating a CI infrastructure). Pharo arose out of INRIA[1], one of France's publicly funded national research institutes. But their mission and governance structure is not suited to managing non-research engineers dedicated to working on Pharo. So InriaSoft[2] was created to fork off its successful software into consortiums funding pure engineering work on the software as an ongoing concern. At the moment the consortium has one full-time engineer, but hope to get another in the next couple of years if the consortium continues the current growth rate. AFAIK (I am not directly involved), the main efforts decided by consortium members were: * Stabilizing 32-bit to 64-bit conversion for Pharo, utilizing and contributing to the OpenSmalltalk-VM project. * Stablizing Iceberg as our Git/GUI interface * Maintaining CI infrastructure btw, There is also the Pharo Association with 82 individual members. [3] [1] https://www.inria.fr/en/institute/inria-in-brief/inria-in-a-few-words https://www.inria.fr/en/institute/inria-in-brief/inria-in-a-... [2] https://www.inria.fr/en/news/news-from-inria/launch-of-inriasoft-software-community https://www.inria.fr/en/news/news-from-inria/launch-of-inria... [3] https://association.pharo.org/ https://association.pharo.org/
luser1024 8y ago
The first one that comes to mind is the scratch package[1]. The entire scratch language, as far as I know, runs on top of squeak [1] https://packages.ubuntu.com/source/trusty/scratch https://packages.ubuntu.com/source/trusty/scratch
- monocasa 8y ago
  Scratch was rewritten in JavaScript a few years back, AFAIK.
  - jecel 8y ago
    It was rewritten in Flash and now is being rewritten in Javascript. An independent project created an extended Scratch clone in Javascript called Snap!.
fusiongyro 8y ago
DrGeo is a geometry package for education. http://www.drgeo.eu/ http://www.drgeo.eu/ MOOSE, which is some sort of code analysis tool: http://www.moosetechnology.org/ http://www.moosetechnology.org/ I've never been able to make heads or tails of it, but it's kind of an architect-level tool and I'm just a lowly engineer.

monocasa 8y ago

The only people I've heard of using Smalltalk at all other than in dogfood situations are people using Gemstone. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemstone_(database) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemstone_(database)

spooneybarger 8y ago
I know of a number of smaller business that are "as a service" that are built using Smalltalk.
dunham 8y ago
Way back in the day, "DabbleDB" was written in Smalltalk. (It was a Zenkit/Airtable type web app.) If I remember right, they had a separate image per customer and it took a moment to bring up the VM if hadn't been to the site in a while.
- e12e 8y ago
  Sadly they got acqu-hired by twitter - and judging by some (not bad, just in lack of enthusiasm) comments, I got a sense that they sold dabbledb at peak technical/architectural debt... It's a bit sad, I appeared to be a Google sheets meets office 365 flows on steroids before either was any good: https://youtu.be/6wZmYMWKLkY https://youtu.be/6wZmYMWKLkY (i think that's from 2006 or so, archive.org has more info, but it's a bit painful to navigate on mobile) Avi Bryant comments on hn from time to time: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=avibryant https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=avibryant As I understand it, each customer got an image/vm - and data was just stored as Smalltalk objects. It'd been interesting to see where they might have gone if they coupled the dabbledb front end with gemstone/s.
luser1024 8y ago
Gemstone provides a database. There are very large Smalltalk based applications that run using Gemstone as the backing database[1] . These applications are, for the most part, very large in-house applications that don't have much external visibility. [1] http://seaside.gemtalksystems.com/docs/OOCL_SuccessStory.pdf http://seaside.gemtalksystems.com/docs/OOCL_SuccessStory.pdf
gaius 8y ago
JPMorgan have a fairly serious Smalltalk app http://www.cincom.com/pdf/CS040819-1.pdf http://www.cincom.com/pdf/CS040819-1.pdf However, only one. Make of that what you will.
- ben-coman 8y ago
  They only have on app because Smalltalk if agile enough they build everything they need into it as the need arises - and this has been maintained over many years.
ben-coman 8y ago
Gemstone is not "using" Smalltalk. Gemstone "is-a" Smalltalk. Here are commercial companies that believe in Pharo (in the money on the table way of measuring belief) http://consortium.pharo.org/ http://consortium.pharo.org/
- flubert 8y ago
  Interesting. So am I right in assuming there are: - 9 bronze level (1k Euro/year) - 5 silver level (2k Euro/year) - 11 gold level (4k Euro/year) - 5 platinum level (8k Euro/year) ...members of the consortium (based on the color of the surround on the member label/icon)? So that would be ~103,000 Euro per year? Or is that signifying a one-time contribution (vs. recurring annual)? It doesn't look like there has been a consortium report published since 2015: http://consortium.pharo.org/web/reports http://consortium.pharo.org/web/reports ...any ideas what that means? (i.e. they stopped publishing them for privacy reasons, the consortium no longer has meetings, the consortium is no longer active, etc.?) Any ideas on what projects they are currently funding, and how many man-hours of programmer time are being purchased for Pharo in 2018?
  - ben-coman 8y ago
    Its a recurring fee. Of course, its dependent on members feeling they are getting value for money and continuing each year. The platinum level was only recently created. I don't know what it means that there is not later reports. The consortium is definitely active. It arose because open source software is about people scratching an itch, and often the focus is on the fun stuff and not on the boring, difficult, dirty engineering required to make a product reliable and successful (e.g. operating a CI infrastructure). Pharo arose out of INRIA[1], one of France's publicly funded national research institutes. But their mission and governance structure is not suited to managing non-research engineers dedicated to working on Pharo. So InriaSoft[2] was created to fork off its successful software into consortiums funding pure engineering work on the software as an ongoing concern. At the moment the consortium has one full-time engineer, but hope to get another in the next couple of years if the consortium continues the current growth rate. AFAIK (I am not directly involved), the main efforts decided by consortium members were: * Stabilizing 32-bit to 64-bit conversion for Pharo, utilizing and contributing to the OpenSmalltalk-VM project. * Stablizing Iceberg as our Git/GUI interface * Maintaining CI infrastructure btw, There is also the Pharo Association with 82 individual members. [3] [1] https://www.inria.fr/en/institute/inria-in-brief/inria-in-a-few-words https://www.inria.fr/en/institute/inria-in-brief/inria-in-a-... [2] https://www.inria.fr/en/news/news-from-inria/launch-of-inriasoft-software-community https://www.inria.fr/en/news/news-from-inria/launch-of-inria... [3] https://association.pharo.org/ https://association.pharo.org/

luser1024 8y ago

The first one that comes to mind is the scratch package[1]. The entire scratch language, as far as I know, runs on top of squeak [1] https://packages.ubuntu.com/source/trusty/scratch https://packages.ubuntu.com/source/trusty/scratch

monocasa 8y ago
Scratch was rewritten in JavaScript a few years back, AFAIK.
- jecel 8y ago
  It was rewritten in Flash and now is being rewritten in Javascript. An independent project created an extended Scratch clone in Javascript called Snap!.

fusiongyro 8y ago

DrGeo is a geometry package for education. http://www.drgeo.eu/ http://www.drgeo.eu/ MOOSE, which is some sort of code analysis tool: http://www.moosetechnology.org/ http://www.moosetechnology.org/ I've never been able to make heads or tails of it, but it's kind of an architect-level tool and I'm just a lowly engineer.