On 29. 10. 2010 10:35, Julian Fitzell wrote:
On 29. 10. 2010 09:34, Geert Claes wrote: Its not just appearance Andres, it's the complete User eXperience: intuitiveness, ease of use, productivity, fun factor as well as the look and feel. A lot of progress has already been made in this area, but there is still a long way to go because most Smalltalk IDE's have not evolved that much since the 70's ... that's probably part of why Smalltalk is being treated like a black and white movie :)
As someone who spends much of my time dealing with Smalltalk users, customers, and prospects, I can say that it *does* matter to most people. Solving difficult problems is a very valuable thing to do, but without doing it in an environment that is broadly appealing (visually, UX, etc. as Geert says) Smalltalk will never have any chance of being more than a tiny niche
Agree completely. Aesthetics is very important moment here, specially in a world where perception is more important than reality, as Graham very nicely shown with his examples. That's why we need to be balanced here, we need to make a better "perception" (look&feel, marketing, documentation,...) but be careful not to forget to our "reality" (technical brilliance), which is actually our stronger point and which is the cause why Smalltalk is resurrecting again and again Best regards Janko -- Janko Mivšek AIDA/Web Smalltalk Web Application Server http://www.aidaweb.si