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Comment by killertypo | Hacker News Reader

Oh I do want to add that it is a language behind a paywall as well. Which i find rather strange. Being charged as a customer to one) use their language and two) being charged per user we allowed into the environment.

Because Smalltalk is an enclosed runtime (similar to Java, but much worse). We had to tell them how many users would be using non-developer editions of the runtime and they charged us for that.

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I don't find that strange, as I remember the days we had to pay for every single one of our tools, including distribution royalties.

Open source kind of killed this way the industry used to work forcing companies to find other ways of revenue, except for big corporations that kind of still work this way.

cough borland cough :) Oh I guess, i just felt it was strange that Cincom still charges a significant amount of money to run their stuff, per seat and per server pricing.

When you look at the market of tools today. Historically speaking, they were par for the course.

There is a big difference in pricing between Borland and Smalltalk vendors. I remember the Turbo Pascal / Turbo C pricing and how it really made quality compilers accessible. Smalltalk never had that revolution.

Anytime you need to "call for pricing", you know its going to cost.

correction smalltalk WAS a language behind a paywall... which, as others have suggested was probably a significant contribution to its decline. Squeak http://www.squeak.org/ (kid oriented) and Pharoah http://pharo.org/ (professional oriented) are both excellent and free.

and still IS depending on the distribution. Squeak and Pharo are great from what I understand, but are lacking some of the enterprise features present in Cincoms distribution. Though for 99.999% squeak and pharo are going to be more than enough.

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