Smalltalk Digest: April Edition
New Product Releases!
It is our pleasure to bring you the current version of Cincom Smalltalk. This release includes the maintenance releases of Cincom® ObjectStudio® 8.7.1 and Cincom® VisualWorks® 8.1.1. For more information about these new releases including links for ordering, click here.
Latest News and Updates
- A Worthwhile Cause — Cincom Smalltalk Program Director Cycles for a Cure
- Join Our Team! — Cincom Smalltalk Team Seeks New Members
- Major Announcement — Dates Announced for 24th International Smalltalk Joint Conference (ESUG 2016)/Call for Contributions
- Important Dates — Upcoming Deadlines for SPLASH 2016: OOPSLA & Onward!
- Call for Papers — IWST16 — International Workshop on Smalltalk Technologies
- Improving and Evolving Programming — Programming Experience 2016 (PX/16) Workshop at ECOOP – Call for Papers
- Extending Knowledge — Get Social with Cincom Smalltalk
- Preparing for the Next Stage — Roassal Enters Stabilization Phase
- New Version Released — Version 1.4 of the PDF Library PDF4Smalltalk Released to the Public Store (with MIT License)
- JSON Support — How to Use ODBCEXDI to Handle JSON Data in Cincom VisualWorks
- Exposing Unknown Abilities — Hidden Gems Screencast Series
- Good Question, Thorough Answer — Q&A Regarding Visual Wave Migration
- New Development Tool — Senders of Deprecated Browser
- Accommodating Customer Needs — BrowseOverrides
- A Look at Our Numbering System — Random Musings − Why 12 Is a Good Number
- Seeking Submissions — SPLASH 2016 Combined Call for Contributions
Upcoming Events
- April 25, May 23, June 27 and July 25,2016 — UK Smalltalk User Group (London, England)
- May 9, July 11, and September 12, 2016 — Toronto Smalltalk User Group (Toronto, Canada)
- May 15, 2016 — Submission Deadline for the International Workshop on Smalltalk Technologies
- June 4, 2016 — GrittyUp
- July 18, 2016 — Programming Experience 2016 (PX/16) Workshop at ECOOP (Rome, Italy)
- August 21, 2016 — Camp Smalltalk (Prague, Czech Republic)
- August 22-26, 2016 — The 24th International Smalltalk Joint Conference (ESUG 2016) (Prague, Czech Republic)
- August 23, 2016 — IWST16 — International Workshop on Smalltalk Technologies (Prague, Czech Republic)
- October 30 — November 4, 2016 — SPLASH 2016 (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
- Update on Smalltalk Events
Cincom Corporate Information
Smalltalk News Repositories
- News from the Cincom Smalltalk Team
- Serving the Smalltalk Community — Cincom Smalltalk Community Blogs
Resources
- Partnering for Success — Cincom Supporting Customer and Partner Success
- Event Promotion — Do You Have an Event That You Would Like to Have Promoted?
- New Website Feature — Contributed Components
- Focusing on the User — Introducing a Revamped User Portal
- Getting the Word Out — Cincom Smalltalk and Social Media Channels
- Availability of Information — New Product Information Readily Available on the Cincom Smalltalk Website
- Academia — The Cincom Smalltalk Academic Program
- Common Tools Tutorials — “Common Tools” Tutorial Videos Available
- Product Information Tutorials — Product Information Tutorials Available
Smalltalk Job Opportunities
Cincom Smalltalk Program Director Cycles for a Cure
Cincom Smalltalk Program Director, Suzanne Fortman, will be cycling in the third annual “GrittyUp,” a three-hour spin session benefiting the John Wayne Cancer Foundation, on Saturday, June 4 from 1:00-4:00 p.m. at GRIT Cycle in Costa Mesa, CA. Click here for more information and to make a donation.
Cincom Smalltalk Team Seeks New Members
Cincom Smalltalk is rapidly growing and improving, and we’re looking for people like you to join our team! If you’ve been looking to start a new career, what better time than now? For more information about the positions we are looking to fill, or to discuss how you might contribute to our growing team, contact Cincom Smalltalk Program Director, Suzanne Fortman.
Dates Announced for 24th International Smalltalk Joint Conference (ESUG 2016)/Call for Contributions
The 24th International Smalltalk Joint Conference (ESUG 2016), one of Europe’s most anticipated Smalltalk events, will take place on August 22-26 in Prague, Czech Republic and conference organizers are looking for contributions. Click here for more information including ways that you can contribute.
Upcoming Deadlines for SPLASH 2016: OOPSLA & Onward!
SPLASH 2016 will be held at the Mövenpick Hotel, Amsterdam City Centre in Amsterdam, The Netherlands on October 30 through November 4, 2016, and there are some important dates that are fast approaching. Click here for additional information.
IWST16 — International Workshop on Smalltalk Technologies
IWST16 (the International Workshop on Smalltalk Technologies) will take place in Prague, Czech Republic on August 23, 2016. The goal of the workshop is to create a forum around advancements or experiences in Smalltalk and to trigger discussions and exchanges of ideas. Workshop organizers are calling on attendees for three types of papers. For more information, click here.
Programming Experience 2016 (PX/16) Workshop at ECOOP – Call for Papers
The Programming Experience 2016 (PX/16) Workshop (co-located with ECOOP 2016) will take place on Monday, July 18 in Rome, Italy. The Programming Experience Workshop is about what happens in a room when one or two programmers sit down in front of computers and produce code—especially when it’s exploratory programming. To learn more about this workshop, click here.
Get Social with Cincom Smalltalk
Our website is a virtual goldmine with a wealth of knowledge found throughout the many pages on our site. Did you know we also have an active social media presence? Click here for more information on getting social with Cincom Smalltalk.
Roassal Enters Stabilization Phase
Roassal has entered a stabilization phase and will soon be entering a new development phase. In preparation for this, research is being done to determine possible product improvements. Click here to learn more and to find out how you can provide input.
Version 1.4 of the PDF Library PDF4Smalltalk Released to the Public Store (with MIT License)
Christian Haider of Smalltalked Visuals GmbH tells us that version 1.4 of the PDF library PDF4Smalltalk has been released to the public store (with MIT license). The library now supports Smalltalk images (pictures) to be inserted into PDFs. For additional information, click here.
How to Use ODBCEXDI to Handle JSON Data in Cincom VisualWorks
JSON data type support has been popular in the last few years since it provides greater flexibility for users. In this article, we will demonstrate how to use ODBCEXDI to handle JSON data in VisualWorks. Click here for the article.
**NEW** Hidden Gems Screencast Series
The purpose of the Hidden Gems Screencast is to make developers who use Cincom Smalltalk aware of the useful abilities of the products that may not be obvious. Click here to see how Cincom Smalltalk Product Manager, Arden Thomas, intends to uncover those “hidden gems.” Click here to access the new Hidden Gems video, which discusses the VisualWorks loader.
Q&A Regarding Visual Wave Migration
A Cincom Smalltalk customer recently asked a very pertinent question regarding the migration from Visual Wave in Cincom VisualWorks 7.* to VisualWorks 8.1.1, and members of our Cincom Smalltalk engineering team were more than happy to provide a detailed response. Click here for this Q&A.
The Senders of Deprecated Browser is a new contributed package for Cincom ObjectStudio 8.6 and Cincom VisualWorks 8.0 or above. It was created to help developers track down, evaluate and hopefully eliminate any places in their code that include call methods that have been marked as deprecated. Click here to learn more.
We’re happy to introduce a new contributed package that’s designed to help customers quickly review any methods in their images that have been overridden by extensions in other packages. Click here to read about BrowseOverrides.
Random Musings − Why 12 Is a Good Number
As computer programmers, software developers and human beings working with numbers, we often take our base 10 decimal system for granted. But what if, as a society, we were starting over? Click here for a very interesting article from Cincom Smalltalk Product Manager, Arden Thomas.
SPLASH 2016 Combined Call for Contributions
The ACM SIGPLAN conference on Systems, Programming, Languages and Applications: Software for Humanity (SPLASH 2016) will be held at the Mövenpick Hotel, Amsterdam City Centre in Amsterdam, The Netherlands on October 30 through November 4, 2016, and conference organizers are requesting high-quality submissions. Click here for more information.
The UK Smalltalk User Group will be meeting on April 25, May 23, June 27 and July 25 in London, England. Click here for more information.
The Toronto Smalltalk User Group will be meeting on May 9, July 11 and September 12 in Toronto, Canada. Click here for more information.
Programming Experience 2016 (PX/16) Workshop at ECOOP
The Programming Experience 2016 (PX/16) Workshop (co-located with ECOOP 2016) will take place on Monday, July 18 in Rome, Italy. Click here for more information including how you can submit papers.
Camp Smalltalk will be held in Prague, Czech Republic on August 21, just prior to the ESUG 2016 Conference. Click here for more information.
The 24th International Smalltalk Joint Conference (ESUG 2016)
The 24th International Smalltalk Joint Conference (ESUG 2016) will take place in Prague, Czech Republic on August 22-16, 2016. For additional information, including how you can contribute to this conference, click here.
IWST16 — International Workshop on Smalltalk Technologies
IWST16 (the International Workshop on Smalltalk Technologies) will take place in Prague, Czech Republic on August 23, 2016. For more information, including how to submit papers, click here.
SPLASH 2016 will be held at the Mövenpick Hotel, Amsterdam City Centre in Amsterdam, The Netherlands on October 30 through November 4, 2016. Click here for more information, including details on submitting contributions to this important conference.
Click here for an update on Smalltalk-related events you may want to attend.
Cincom Announces Two Major Changes in Management Personnel
Cincom recently announced two major management personnel changes; one in the area of international markets and one in the areas of multi-channel configure-price-quoting, advanced manufacturing capabilities for ERP and document communications management. Click here for more information.
News from the Cincom Smalltalk Team
Click here to get Smalltalk news from the Cincom Smalltalk team.
Cincom Smalltalk Community Blogs
There are many blogs run by the Cincom Smalltalk Group now. Check them out by clicking here.
Cincom Supporting Customer and Partner Success
The Cincom Smalltalk Team is extending an offer to its current users to let us assist in helping to promote their applications or services. For more information, or if you are interested in participating in this offer, click here.
Do You Have an Event That You Would Like to Have Promoted?
Do you have a Camp Smalltalk, Smalltalk conference or other event that you would like promoted? We can help. Click here to find out how.
We’re happy to announce a new feature of the Cincom Smalltalk website: the Contributed Components Directory. Here you can find all of the contributed components that are available with our current product offerings. Click here for more information on other components.
Introducing a Revamped User Portal
To the Cincom Smalltalk Team, there’s nothing more important than serving the needs of its users. Complete customer satisfaction is something that we continuously strive for. As part of that effort, we’re happy to introduce a portal on the Cincom Smalltalk website that’s dedicated solely to supplying pertinent, important data and helpful links to users. Click here to check it out.
Cincom Smalltalk and Social Media Channels
We’re getting the word out … Cincom Smalltalk is an extraordinary and powerful product suite with amazing capabilities and a solid future! One of the tools that has been helpful in publicizing this fact is the use of Social Media. Click here for more information.
New Product Information Readily Available on the Cincom Smalltalk Website
The Cincom Smalltalk product suite is constantly being updated and improved upon. To help keep you up-to-date, we have several locations on the Cincom Smalltalk website where anyone can find out the latest product improvements, changes and release information. Click here to find out the locations.
The Cincom Smalltalk Academic Program
With a goal of increasing the quality of the available system design and engineering training, providing higher-quality engineers and developers to the industry and users, and expanding the Smalltalk community, we suggest that you look into the Cincom Smalltalk Academic Program. Click here to read all about it.
#TutorialTuesday:@cincomsmalltalk Version Control – Creating a source code repository and getting started using it
— Cincom Smalltalk (@cincomsmalltalk) March 15, 2016
“Common Tools” Tutorial Videos Available
The Cincom Smalltalk Team has made a series of several new tutorials available. The first set of tutorials focuses on “Common Tools” and how many of these tools, which are used for development in Cincom ObjectStudio and Cincom VisualWorks, are now shared.
- For information on the System Browser Overview tutorial, click here.
- For information on the Core Browser Usage tutorial, click here.
- For information on the Inspector Tool tutorial, click here.
- For information on the Debugger Overview tutorial, click here.
- For information on the Debugger Usage tutorial, click here.
- For information on the Version Control tutorial, click here.
- For information on the Process Monitor tutorial, click here.
- For information on the Code Recovery tutorial, click here.
Product Information Tutorials Available
The Cincom Smalltalk Team has launched a series of several new tutorials for introducing our products.
- For information on the Cincom ObjectStudio Product Introduction tutorial, click here.
- For information on the Cincom VisualWorks Product Launcher tutorial, click here.
- For information on the Cincom ObjectStudio GUI Designer, Part One tutorial, click here.
- For information on the Cincom VisualWorks Product Introduction tutorial, click here.
- For information on the Cincom ObjectStudio GUI Designer, Part Two tutorial, click here.
- For information on the Cincom ObjectStudio Modeling Tool Overview tutorial, click here.
- For information on the Setting Up Your Environment tutorial, click here.
Are you interested in a Smalltalk-related job? Cincom Smalltalk Support Engineer James Savidge keeps the Smalltalk community up-to-date regarding Smalltalk opportunities throughout the community. The Smalltalk Jobs Blog posts Smalltalk-related career opportunities from around the globe. Click here to see what’s available.
Cincom Smalltalk Team Seeks Cincom VisualWorks Software Engineer
The Cincom Smalltalk team is currently looking for a well-qualified Cincom VisualWorks software engineer to enhance the VM Team in our Smalltalk Development Team. If interested, please contact Cincom Smalltalk Program Director, Suzanne Fortman to obtain a job description or to apply.