dlw@Atherton.COM (David Williams) (09/29/90)
Just Think, if you are a student you can now buy a NeXTstation and get a
complete development environment with it for $2995. Thats cheaper than the cost
of PPS's product! Even retail is $4995...one could get gnusmalltalk and put a
nextstep GUI on it.
PPS is far too overpriced and will remain just a curiosity--in spite of the
enormous capabilities--because of its bizzare pricing structure.
As an individual I can buy an environment like say THINK C for $150 or so.
Now perhaps PPS is not interested in being a successful software company,
perhaps its all that time spent in Xerox that has blunted their hunger to
make money and see their wonderful product in the hands of more people.
I' d like to think this is not the case. I mean who REALLY wants to program
in C++?
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David Williams -- dlw@atherton.com -- (408) 734-9822 x291
Atherton Technology -- The Software BackPlane
1333 Bordeaux Drive Sunnyvale, CA 94089
AIX,SunOS,Ultrix,VMS
*ejd@iris.brown.edu (Ed Devinney) (10/02/90)
In article <1990Sep28.171937@Atherton.COM> dlw@Atherton.COM (David Williams) writes: > Just Think, if you are a student you can now buy a NeXTstation and get a > complete development environment with it for $2995. Thats cheaper than the cost > of PPS's product! I just spoke to PPS yesterday, and they gave $3500 as a _site_ license fee (educational); $350 for an individual license. Am I missing something? Anyone using Objectworks/St in a multiprogrammer environment? Are we out of our minds to try to do so? ed Ed Devinney ... ejd@iris.brown.edu ... IRIS/Brown University - Visualize Whirled Peas -
paul@Data-IO.COM (Paul Brownlow) (10/03/90)
In article <51869@brunix.UUCP> ejd@iris.brown.edu (Ed Devinney) writes: >I just spoke to PPS yesterday, and they gave $3500 as a _site_ license fee >(educational); $350 for an individual license. Am I missing something? ^^^^^^^^^^^ That's the key - a lot of us out here don't fall into the "educational" category and end up spend a lot more dough. >Anyone using Objectworks/St in a multiprogrammer environment? Are we out >of our minds to try to do so? I worked on a ST-80 project with 4-5 programmers. It's possible to succeed if the areas of work are very well partitioned, otherwise you'll be pulling your hair out (until you have none left) at "merge" time. -- Paul Brownlow | "Saddam Hussein is a liar" -G. Bush Data I/O Corp. Redmond, WA | "George Bush is a liar" -S. Hussein paul@data-io.com | "You're a liar!" - Johnny Rotten | "Liar, liar, pants on fire" - kids
cohill@vtserf.cc.vt.edu (Andrew M. Cohill) (10/03/90)
Smalltalk can be difficult in a multi-programmer environment. We have been using Digitalk ST/V on pcs and Macs here, and have found that we have to be *very* careful about not stomping on each other's work. The strategy we developed works fairly well: as project leader, my machine is designated as the master source. We try to keep work partitioned, so that only one person works on a class or subset of class methods at a time. Then once every two or three days, as needed, everyone brings their stuff to my machine, files it in, and we verify that in fact everything works together. Then we file out the entire set of application classes and methods (gotta get one of those application browsers--this part is a nightmare), and everyone goes back and copies the whole new set of stuff over their old stuff. We have also found it to be pretty useful to program in pairs part of the time. It not only cuts down on overlapping code problems, but ST is so compact and powerful that we seem to get more done at times (together) than if the two of us work separately. In my experience, this never works well with conventional languages because you spend so much time just typing, editing, debugging syntax errors, and similar stuff, so one person ends up just sitting around. -- | ...we have to look for routes of power our teachers never | imagined, or were encouraged to avoid. T. Pynchon |Andy Cohill |703/231-7855 cohill@vtserf.cc.vt.edu VPI&SU
warner@scubed.com (Ken Warner) (10/03/90)
In article <2734@dataio.Data-IO.COM> paul@Data-IO.COM (Paul Brownlow) writes: --In article <51869@brunix.UUCP> ejd@iris.brown.edu (Ed Devinney) writes: -- --I just spoke to PPS yesterday, and they gave $3500 as a _site_ license fee -- --(educational); $350 for an individual license. Am I missing something? -- ^^^^^^^^^^^ --That's the key - a lot of us out here don't fall into the "educational" --category and end up spend a lot more dough. For the past two years we've been using XSIS's Analyst to prototype an approach to project managment. Analyst is a great tool. But around here, as people become aware of the new price their attitude is, "...well, that about kills it," meaning pursuit of future business based on Smalltalk/Analyst is simply not a reasonable thing to do because our clients will not spend that much money on Smalltalk. And we will not spend that much money on Smalltalk as a prerequisite to development. Sigh! Guess I'll dust off my (bleah) X Windows manuals. Ken Warner
johnson@m.cs.uiuc.edu (10/04/90)
Smalltalk-80 works fine for multiprogrammer projects. The change management tools are an important part of its success, since these tools let you know exactly which part of the image have been changed and whether several sets of changes will conflict. There are currently four people working on the project, down from six last summer. The project is large, so there are parts of it that are fairly independent, but we often have several people working on the same classes. As long as they behave properly, this is not a problem. Ideally, people file out their changes every day or so and put them in a common directory. The files are ordered by the time they were created. The rule is that a new file must be compatible with all the ones before it. Sometimes a new file will not be compatible with changes that someone is currently working on. That is the fault of the person who has NOT installed his changes. This rarely happens unless someone has been sitting on changes for weeks and weeks. Most change files are small; a dozen methods or less. Obviously, major changes cause more problems. I have heard a lot more complaints from people using Smalltalk-V, since it does not have the same change management tools. However, Smalltalk-80 is better for multiprogrammer projects then Unix with RCS and make. Ralph Johnson -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign