Why Choose Cincom Smalltalk?

For Cincom Smalltalk, these are the "wow" moments that we have seen in our customers and partners time and time again

Smalltalk is cool again. Here is a simple equation. In terms of mental fortitude…

1 Smalltalk developer = 2.5 C++ developers 1 C++ Developer = 1.5 Java developers
Mark Driver, Gartner Research Analyst

You may be excited about building your new system with Cincom Smalltalk, but you are probably going to have to justify that decision to somebody somewhere. We thought that you might find the things that we think are special about our product useful when it comes to explaining why Cincom Smalltalk is for you.

Cincom Smalltalk and Our Competition

Cincom Smalltalk and Programming

An interesting, albeit abstract, discussion came up recently about the fundamental nature of Smalltalk programs—should they be thought of as a set of definitions or as a sequence of transformations applied to a particular starting point? It’s a discussion with a rich history in the Smalltalk community.

For Cincom Smalltalk, these are the “wow” moments that we have seen in our customers and partners time and time again:

Speed of development
Flexibility and adaptability of the developed software
The ability to model complex systems more simply than with other systems

Today, let’s look at the speed at which our customers and partners develop using Cincom Smalltalk.

Speed of Development Using Cincom Smalltalk

It has been a constant anecdotal refrain that Smalltalk is around two to three times more productive in producing working features than languages such as Java and C#.

We put this down to a tightly integrated development tool set that sits on top of an image. Your image is a read-write application that allows you to make changes to the running code quickly and simply. Errors can be debugged in the running code as you write it.

With our extensive frameworks covering a wide range of functionality, our friendly support staff, and a product that continues to stretch the boundaries of software development, we hope that you too will become an enthusiastic user of the power of Smalltalk.

It is the original home of Extreme Programming and continues to support the inherent practices of XP. Kent Beck tweeted:

after two intense weeks in smalltalk i’m dreading going back to other languages
— Kent Beck (@KentBeck) July 16, 2010

Kent doubled down years later with another comment:

@emaringolo even more so. i have trouble memorizing details of new languages but i remember smalltalk just fine.
— Kent Beck (@KentBeck) February 21, 2016

In the words of some of our customers …

With such a high productivity factor that Smalltalk gives us, reaction times to market changes have enabled us to beat most of our competitors. We have estimated that if we had built Kapital in another language such as Java, we would require at least three times the amount of resources.

In our company, technological understanding meets creative and innovative software development. Our early decision for object-oriented technologies pays off. For several years, we have been growing faster than the market. Cincom Smalltalk is and will remain our central development environment in the near future.

Flexibility and Adaptibility of Developed Software

In today’s agile world where delivery into production is often demanded multiple times a day, the ability to rework and refactor code and get it back into production fast is a significant advantage. Many of our customers use Cincom Smalltalk’s environment to debug problems in production systems and then move the fixes back into the development pipeline to swiftly deliver a well-tested product back into production. The environment allows code to be easily re-factored and re-architected as it comes with a full set of refactoring tools. Because the language keeps code short and sweet, it is far easier to get to grips with existing code and make the changes needed to cope with changing business requirements.

Our business activities are constantly changing. This is how it’s always been and probably always will be. In addition to regular changes like reorganizations and new technologies, we are greatly affected by new laws and a latent wish from our clients to solve tasks as cost-effectively as possible. One way to be efficient in my work is to use as few resources as possible when developing new applications.
Lennart Stenberg, Swedish National Tax Authority

This malleability has been delivered without a loss of quality. Indeed it is the superior quality of the systems created with Cincom Smalltalk that has kept many significant customers so enthusiastic about our technology. Systems, where outages are simply too expensive to contemplate such as computer chip fab wafer plants, nuclear power stations and money-market trading systems all, rely on our technology.

The Ability to Model Complex Systems More Simply Than with Other Systems

With a language that is clean and simple, it is far easier to create business models that make sense to developers and customers. These business models form the core of systems that have to evolve over many years. The fact that that code is modeled in a simple and elegant manner allows the developers to understand it, enhance it and evolve it simply and easily. We are used to model countries railway systems, entire financial markets, shipping distribution networks and even the social behavior of monkeys. As Alan Kay, the father of Smalltalk, said:

Simple things should be simple. Complex things should be possible.

If your software does not really reflect how your business works, or if it does in a way that is hard to understand or change, then your business may pay a price far greater than the costs of the systems you are developing. If you want to see the difference from your existing system, try writing your core business model in Smalltalk and compare. Whatever you are considering doing with Cincom Smalltalk, we would be delighted to hear from you. If it is just a question of how to implement some code or something more extensive, then we are happy to help.

1-800-2CINCOM, ext. 2003
CSSTARTeam@cincom.com