I read a blog post about a developers journey from Smalltalk to PHP to Ruby and back with probably a bunch of other stuff mixed in between. In this post, the author puts into words many of the things I have wondered about for the last several months. I am by no means a Ruby or Ruby-on-Rails expert, but I have messed with it enough. I do like it. Its nice and clean, simple to use, and easy to get up and running quickly.
I remember my transition from Smalltalk to Java. When I had somewhat mastered Smalltalk Java started to become the big thing. For some reason I felt the need to move to Java. It was the buzz and ‘everyone was doing it’. My company at the time started a major project using Java so I fought to be a part of it. Once I felt like I had somewhat mastered Java I wished it was more like Smalltalk. Don’t get me wrong, I like Java. Its really just a different paradigm and I think both have their place in software development. Recently the RoR stuff got me excited and I started looking into it. As I said above, I like Ruby/RoR, but I still thought Smalltalk was better at many things. I just haven’t gotten excited enought about Ruby/RoR to jump into it very deep.
So this blog post comes along and introduces me to Seaside, a ‘framework for developing sophisticated web applications in Smalltalk’. I HAVE to look into it – long gone are the days of the VisualAge for Smalltalk web crud (to be fair, it was good for the time). Will it mean a renaissance for Smalltalk? Probably not. Its time may have past – especially with the newest generation of programmers seeing Ruby/RoR as the most elegant OO solution. But it is worth a look. And if its the right tool for the job, its going in my toolbox.
Anyway, the original blog post is a great post detailing a lot of the opinion that I bet many ‘old Smalltalkers’ have of the programming landscape today as it pertains to Ruby and RoR. Check it out.
mikewitters.com 
Smalltalk rules.
Yeah, I know, lousy comment. But for the time in my life that I first encountered it, it was the perfect language. I fought to escape COBOL, and when I sat down to do my “hello world” in Smalltalk, I instantly got it. I didn’t know what object-oriented programming was. I just learned Smalltalk, and object-oriented was an afterthought. Java was a disappointment, but I had to go there. I found that Smalltalk is the perfect foundation. It should be used in Programming 101 in every programmer mill in Mumbai, Bangalore, and Hyderabad. That and the GoF book.
I absolutely agree. The pure object oriented nature of Smalltalk is, at minimum, what should be illustrated in every OO class. Smalltalk is a beautiful language. Unfortunately it just didn’t do what was necessary to stay mainstream. Seaside might help, but its no leap from what I’ve seen.