Comment by jasode | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jasode | Hacker News Reader

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>It wasn't the cost of Smalltalk that was the problem, as there were low-cost implementations of Smalltalk, such as Smalltalk/V available on PC from the mid 80s onwards.

Smalltalk/V on DOS (1980s) had extra runtime royalties payments which was too expensive for deployment. So other 4GL languages like dBASE/Clipper/Foxpro or even C Language without those costs were more attractive.

The later Smalltalk/V for Windows did eventually remove the royalties but the base dev package didn't include ODBC database connectivity for free. (I think you had to pay extra for the Digitalk PARTS Workbench with db drivers?) In contrast, Microsoft Visual Basic had free ODBC drivers to connect to Oracle, Sybase, etc.

Of the dozens of companies I interacted with for LOB (line-of-business) applications, Smalltalk was never even a consideration. In the early 1990s, there was modest hype and popularity with Powersoft PowerBuilder which was more of a competitor to MS Visual Basic for internal corporate apps than Smalltalk or Java.

March 7, 1988 — "Smalltalk/V 286 is available now and costs $199.95, the company said. Registered users of Digitalk's Smalltalk/V can upgrade for $75 until June 1."

https://books.google.com/books?id=CD8EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA25&ots=...

My very first paid programming gig was doing Powerbuilder dev for a bank. IIRC it was basically a very rich data table widget with a scripting language wrapped around it.

Incidentally, one of my first jobs was debugging automation failures around PowerBuilder apps still running in the early 2000s.

It's amazing how long enterprise software lives.

> Smalltalk/V on DOS (1980s) had extra runtime royalties payments

That's something i don't recall (it was a long time ago).

I am pretty sure it wasn't the case. I phoned Digitalk's Jim Anderson to try to negotiate a license to let me use their image with my 68000 based virtual machine (this was before Digitalk had any Mac versions) so I paid very close attention to the details of their licensing agreement.

Smalltalk/V was distributed as a nearly empty v.exe file plus a list of .dll files. As you developed your code it would get added to the v.exe so your stuff would always be clearly separated from Digitalk's. The .dlls were divided into two groups: basic system and development. The license allowed you to freely redistribute all files except for the development .dlls. If a client of yours wanted those for some reason they would have to buy their own Smalltalk V/DOS from Digitalk.

Except for the source to bytecode compiler, which was secret, the rest of the development system's sources were available. That meant that I didn't actually need Digitalk's permission to do what I wanted since I mostly wanted their sources (I had no idea how much Xerox would charge for the "real" Smalltalk but supposed it would be a lot more than what Digitalk might agree to). But I didn't want to take advantage of their not so well thought out license and upset them. Jim said he didn't think I would be able to port their stuff to the 68000 and didn't give permission for me to try, so I just went in a different direction.

> … didn't include ODBC database connectivity for free.

"ODBC 1.0 was released in September 1992."

https://www.easysoft.com/developer/interfaces/odbc/linux.htm...

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