25 - DISTRIBUTED SMALLTALK

Summary

Yet another brutal review. I never write a tough review without questioning myself: “Is it just me? Am I just not smart enough to get this product? Who am I to tell someone else what to do?”

I am just now getting comfortable with writing what I know and trusting my readers to take what I say and add their perspective and experience to it.

Should you be using Distributed Smalltalk? That is the question I'll address here. This isn't a full-blown product review, nor a technical piece. I'll introduce the history and technical background of Distributed Smalltalk as they apply to the question of who should be using it.

First, what is Distributed Smalltalk? It is a Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA)-compliant extension to ParcPlace System's Visual-Works developed and marketed by Hewlett-Packard. “HP? The hardware company? Those C++ guys?”

My first reaction when I saw that HP had done a Smalltalk product was, “What does HP know about Smalltalk?” The answer to this question is twofold. One answer is “a lot.” HP has been involved peripherally in Smalltalk since it first escaped Xerox. They were one of the first four companies to write a virtual machine. They have also had pockets of interest in Smalltalk ever since. Their 700 series of workstations has held the title for fastest Smalltalk for several years.