Why Learning Smalltalk Can Have a Big Impact for a Developer
We think it is a good idea for developers to learn Smalltalk, even if they do not anticipate the opportunity to use it. Why? Because learning Smalltalk will make you a better object-oriented developer no matter what language you use.
But either directly or tangentially, Smalltalk has also been involved with many nascent technologies that grew in importance and impact to the software development community. These technologies include many modern practices like Agile, Scrum and pair programming. Indeed, Smalltalk and Smalltalkers were involved in these three practices.
Notice the identical top three methodologies for all respondents and professional developers that were mentioned in the 2017 Stack Overflow Survey section titled Development Practices: Which Methodologies Do Developers Use? The top three are:
- Agile,
- Scrum, and
- Pair.
As the survey says, “Agile and Scrum are popular methodologies for developers to keep their projects on track, and 42.8% of developers have used pair programming to improve their code quality and skill set.”
To experience the language that has inspired so much advancement in software development, we suggest adding the modern version of this great language to your development toolbox. Try Cincom Smalltalk for yourself here.