klimas@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com (09/20/90)
There seems to be a little argument breaking out about Smalltalk/V vs. Smalltalk-80 in this topic. As an industrial user of both Smalltalks (and there are a lot more of us than you would believe!) let me say a few words about why both products are necessary for the technology to flourish! Smalltalk-80 may be expensive, bulky and portable. For the portability feature many users are willing to pay a premium. Consider the effort it takes to constantly report software to different platforms and also do revision control on all of the various versions. One rule of thumb is that the development costs go up as the square of the number of versions to be supported. Smalltalk-80 solves that problem handily and for that as well as the extremely rich class libraries deserves a premium. Smalltalk/V (i.e./V /V286 & /V-PM) are targeted towards a different need. That of delivering a low cost, no extrabaggage, efficient Smalltalk system for the masses. If one is looking to get a low runtime cost small executable program for an IBM machine /V fills that niche very effectively. I think that the Smalltalk community has greatly benefited from the forward thinking R&D developments mostly based upon ST-80 to date as well as the low cost mass availablity of ST/V.