IBM Smalltalk and team development

One really great thing about getting the job at Gem Consulting was that we were developing in IBM Smalltalk for OS/2, on IBM computers at IBM.  So we had access to quality support.

My experience using Smalltalk up to this point was using Smalltalk/V which was a popular and very good Smalltalk product.  The IBM Smalltalk was fancier and included GUI drawing tools and source code management, and working with a team of developers (there were four of us) gave me important experience that I never had before.  I learned so much by developing software with others and it taught me to break software down into modules even more effectively than I ever had.

The working space was an audio visual presentation room with an LCD projector that dropped down from the ceiling.  Around the outside of the room were tables where we worked.  We were able to communicate effortlessly because we were in the same space, and when we needed to design or make plans we would all turn our chairs around and use tables in the middle of the room.

Our development of this project went swiftly and smoothly.  I really enjoyed this style of work.

Christmas Vacation

I didn't take the plunge into Smalltalk right away. I wasn't completely sure it was the right choice. I was at the SoftPro store in Burlington in late 1988 and I noticed that they had a copy of the Smalltalk/V software from Digitalk. I asked them if they had any brochures, and they did. Three different full color, double sided marketing sheets. Very nicely done. Everything I saw about the language reminded me of Forth, but it had this idea of objects.

I wasn't about to ask my boss to buy yet another programming tool, so in December I bought it myself. I took the Tandy 1000SX home from work over Christmas vacation and dove into the Smalltalk/V manual, following the tutorial.

I was not disappointed. What an amazing language! I had never used anything so dynamic, or so graphical. Almost all the source code for each and every thing in Smalltalk is there. You can see it and you can modify it if you like. This was very compatible with my observation that Smalltalk and Forth were conceptually similar. The one surprise that really topped off this sundae with a cherry? Smalltalk has built-in multiprocessing. This was the ingredient that I sorely needed to produce the multiuser shop floor control system! What luck!