ulnie@sun1.ruf.uni-freiburg.de (Ulf Niesar) (11/22/90)
Today I received a newsletter by Digitalk. In this newsletter they publish the IBM announcement concerning Smalltalk. I think that this may be of comno interest. However, here it is: ** start of press release ** White Plains, NY, October 15 ... IBM today announced a development and license agreement with Digitalk, Inc., developers of the Smalltalk/V line of object- oriented programming environments. IBM has licensed Digitalk`s Operating System/2 (OS/2) implementation of Smalltalk/V and future Digitalk offerings for prototyping and product development. In addition, IBM and Digitalk will enhance Digitalk's products to meet evolving customer requirements for application development that complies with Systems Application Architecture (SAA), IBM's strategic platform for common features and functions across different hardware platforms. "This agreement with Digitalk allows IBM to accelerate its use of object- oriented technology," said Earl Wheeler, IBM Senior Vice-President and General Manager, Programming Systems. "Smalltalk/V provides a solid foundation for developing Common User Access (CUA) - compliant applications in SAA cooperative processing environments. Our work with Digitalk is one step in IBM's commitment to using object-oriented programming in our products and platforms," Wheeler said. James A. Anderson, President of Digitalk said, "We are delighted that IBM is using Smalltalk/V in product development. Digitalk will be working closely with IBM on enhancements to Smalltalk/V, including a set of visual programming tools, increased AD/Cycle integration and SAA compliance. The resulting products will allow our customers to deliver applications more effectively than ever before." Smalltalk/V is an object-oriented programming language and development environment that Digitalk developed for IBM personal computers. Digitalk currently markets Smalltalk/V development environments worldwide for DOS, OS/2 and the Apple Macintosh, with a Microsoft Windows 3.0 version planned. ** end of reprint from a press release issued by IBM on October, 15 1990. ** ** taken from Scoop newsletter Vol.3 No.4, 1990 (by Digitalk) ** I think that this annoncement makes quite clear, that we will see Smalltalk/V in the full range of product development within SAA. We will see if it intendedto be a tool for rapid prototyping only (very interesting is Anderson's statement concerning integration of Smalltalk into AD/Cycle, IBM's strategic CASE system !), or maybe as a new SAA programming language (Andersom says that they willwork _together with IBM_ on visual programming tools). Is anybody out there who has some more informations ?? Ulf
objtch@extro.ucc.su.oz.au (Peter Goodall) (11/26/90)
Thanks for the followups folks, To continue.. An article was posted to comp.object by Ed Berard on the 22nd Nov which mentions a front-page articel in Computerworld - "IBM on Object-Oriented Path" by Rosemary Hamilton. Un fortunately we have a local edition in Australia which didn't run the same article. We did get on by the same author titled: "IBM to adapt AD/Cycle to OOP Environment" This could be the same article re-edited. From my information and this article it is apparent that IBM has been using Smalltalk/VPM extensively to develop Office Vision. There has been some talk of a Smalltalk to C translator - which I doubt really exists - it is more likely to be a bunch of methods on some classes in the user-interface which generate a C equivalent of Jthe recieving instance. In the article I have seen there is also mention that ParcPlace systems have a also signed a license agreement with IBM. Any furtherinfo? This could be very useful for uor Smalltalk careers. PS Sorry about the typos, its not easy using VI through a noisy line. ---------------------------- Peter Goodall Smalltalk Systems Consultant ObjecTech P/L 162 Burns Bay Rd, LANE COVE , NSW, AUSTRALIA objtch@extro.ucc.su.oz.au
taylord@spock (Don Taylor) (11/26/90)
I received a Digitalk newsletter talking about this deal. My reaction, however, was quite negative. As far as I can recall, everytime a big company like IBM or AT&T has embraced a small company's product as their standard then it has been the kiss of death (or at least of long and lingering illness) for the company and the product. Don. -- Don Taylor (613)-592-2122 x 3007 mitel!taylord@uunet.uu.net Mitel Corp. ...!uunet!mitel!taylord 350 Legget Drive, Kanata Ontario, Canada, K2K 1X3
objtch@extro.ucc.su.oz.au (Peter Goodall) (11/27/90)
taylord@spock (Don Taylor) writes: >I received a Digitalk newsletter talking about this deal. My reaction, >however, was quite negative. As far as I can recall, everytime a big company >like IBM or AT&T has embraced a small company's product as their standard then >it has been the kiss of death (or at least of long and lingering illness) for >the company and the product. >Don. >-- >Don Taylor (613)-592-2122 x 3007 mitel!taylord@uunet.uu.net >Mitel Corp. ...!uunet!mitel!taylord >350 Legget Drive, Kanata >Ontario, Canada, K2K 1X3 Could this be why it takes Digitalk two months to answer my faxes. Also they could do with a connection to the net. Does anyone know of a public access Unix box near them (L.A.) so I can give them the details? ---------------------------- Peter Goodall Smalltalk Systems Consultant ObjecTech P/L 162 Burns Bay Rd, LANE COVE , NSW, AUSTRALIA objtch@extro.ucc.su.oz.au
cohill@vtserf.cc.vt.edu (Andrew M. Cohill) (11/27/90)
I too would like to see Smalltalk become more widely available and more readily accepted as a mainstream development tool, but find it hard to get excited about the IBM announcement. IBM has a long history of spending gobs of money on lots of different approaches/tools/software/etc, and then dropping most of them like a lead brick when they think something else will make them more money. On a more practical note, I think it is very possible that Digitalk will end up as the tail trying to wag the dog, and support for other platforms (like the Mac) will probably suffer greatly. I could easily see IBM telling Digitalk to let their Mac product die or else, the else being loss of the IBM/Digitalk contract. If Digitalk put their "clickable application" technology that they have for PM on the Mac, it would revolutionize Mac programming, but I have little expectation that this will happen. Support from them is awful; their phone support people seem only vaguely acquainted with the product, and can only answer basic, novice-type questions. Anything else you are better off directing to the net. -- | ...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
pallas@eng.sun.com (Joseph Pallas) (11/28/90)
In <5467@taylord> taylord@spock (Don Taylor) writes: >As far as I can recall, everytime a big company >like IBM or AT&T has embraced a small company's product as their standard then >it has been the kiss of death (or at least of long and lingering illness) for >the company and the product. Perhaps you've never heard of a small company called Microsoft? :-) joe
objtch@extro.ucc.su.oz.au (Peter Goodall) (12/04/90)
ulnie@sun1.ruf.uni-freiburg.de (Ulf Niesar) writes: ..... stuff deleted >** end of reprint from a press release issued by IBM on October, 15 1990. ** >** taken from Scoop newsletter Vol.3 No.4, 1990 (by Digitalk) ** >I think that this annoncement makes quite clear, that we will see Smalltalk/V >in the full range of product development within SAA. We will see if it intendedto be a tool for rapid prototyping only (very interesting is Anderson's >statement concerning integration of Smalltalk into AD/Cycle, IBM's strategic >CASE system !), or maybe as a new SAA programming language (Andersom says that >they willwork _together with IBM_ on visual programming tools). >Is anybody out there who has some more informations ?? >Ulf > I was at the Pacific Tools'90 coference last week. A person very likely to know said that IBM was giving a demo of some AD/Cycle stuff nad the system crashed in the middle of the demo. They restarted and it became obvious that the system was written in Smalltalk. (Note crashing is not a feature of Smalltalk) They (IBM) also seem to be reccomending Smalltlak/VPM for developing cooperative processing applications. A lot of IBM's user-interface work is also definitely being done in Smalltlak/VPM. SOme of it is being replaced by C in the production versions. I would love to know details of which parts and why! ---------------------------- Peter Goodall Smalltalk Systems Consultant ObjecTech P/L 162 Burns Bay Rd, LANE COVE , NSW, AUSTRALIA objtch@extro.ucc.su.oz.au