Cincom Smalltalk™ Digest: November Edition

The Cincom Smalltalk Digest is a monthly publication where we share news, updates and resources with customers, partners and users. In this month’s newsletter, you will find the following:

CUSTOMERS and PARTNERS

• How Can Our Team Assist You in Upgrading?

• How Can You Contribute to Cincom Smalltalk Product Direction?

BEGINNERS, FREELANCERS and DEVELOPERS

• What Options Are Available for Cincom Smalltalk?

• How Can You Manage Input Field Content in Cincom Smalltalk?

• Component of the Month: SearchLight

• Be a Part of Our Amazing Team!

CUSTOMERS and PARTNERS

This part of the Cincom Smalltalk Digest is specially designed for our valuable customers and partners.

How Can Our Team Assist You in Upgrading?

In case you missed it, we recently released Cincom Smalltalk 9.1.1 to our customers and partners and made it easier to request it through our Product Order Form. Cincom Smalltalk 9.1.1 is the maintenance releases of Cincom® ObjectStudio® 9.1.1 and Cincom® VisualWorks® 9.1.1 and contain fixes and improvements to the last major 9.1 release.

Now that it’s time to upgrade your product, how can the Cincom Smalltalk team help you succeed?

• Our consultants can assess the environment, interfacing systems and available resources to provide you with a reliable estimate of effort and cost for the upgrade itself, arming you with the needed information to properly allocate your “use it or lose it” money as the year comes to a close.

Whatever it is you need, we are here to help. Reach out to the Cincom Smalltalk team so we can make your upgrade simple and cost-effective.

How Can You Contribute to Cincom Smalltalk Product Direction?

In 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey discussed how too often people listen with the intent to “reply” rather than to “understand.” Attempting to first be understood, you may miss parts or all of the needs and goals of the person you are listening to.

Each month, we ask you for feedback so our team knows what we are doing right, what we are doing wrong and what we could do better. We are always looking for fresh ways to share information with you.  We want to listen to you so we can understand exactly what you need.

Recently, Microsoft introduced and made available Windows 11. We would like to understand how our customers and partners plan to use the Windows platform. This helps us better align our product updates for your success.

If you would like to contribute your comments, please complete a brief survey here.

We value your input and want to make sure you know how to get in touch with us:

• Contact the STAR (Strategic Task Action Resource) Team to send us your comments or suggestions.
• Contact Suzanne Fortman for business or engineering questions about Cincom Smalltalk.
• Contact Arden Thomas for questions about the Cincom Smalltalk Product Roadmap.
• Contact Jeremy Jordan to share a story regarding how you use Cincom Smalltalk.

BEGINNERS, FREELANCERS and DEVELOPERS

This section of the Cincom Smalltalk Digest is dedicated to new Smalltalkers, freelancers and seasoned developers. This section gives you informative articles and specific Smalltalk examples for learning new skills or enhancing existing skills using Cincom Smalltalk.

What Options Are Available for Cincom Smalltalk?

If you haven’t seen our new website, it’s been newly renovated and relaunched with the overall goal of making it simpler for everyone to use. We’ve made it easier to view the content you want and simplified the menu structure, putting the most requested information easily within reach and eliminating the guesswork of where things are. Along with a revamped customer and partner landing spot, we’ve also improved the landing pages of the CST PUL and REV 9.1 Programs.

Personal Use: Try the CST PUL Program

This program is an easy way for prospects to find and request the Cincom Smalltalk Personal Use License. The CST PUL Program allows the freedom for interested developers to evaluate our products before realizing that Cincom Smalltalk is the right fit for their businesses or project needs. The CST PUL Program:

• Gives developers both Cincom ObjectStudioand Cincom VisualWorks, simplifying the decision-making and making it easy for interested users to select the right Cincom Smalltalk product for their business needs.
• Allows ObjectStudio users to experience the robust, cross-platform application development environment of VisualWorks.
• Lets VisualWorks users have easy access to the Next Generation User Interface, Modeling and Mapping Tools and Round-trip Engineering capabilities that are exclusive to ObjectStudio.

Commercial Use: Buy the REV 9.1 Program

The REV 9.1 Program is a bridge between the CST PUL Program and full licensing. It allows for an affordable entry into your connection with the Cincom platform. Although the program is geared off of the Cincom Smalltalk 9.1 major release, new REV Program customers will receive the new 9.1.1 release.

The REV 9.1 Program is available for purchase on our website and gives developers the opportunity to invest in their futures with:

• A preview of the customer experience with Cincom
• A one-year, $1,000 non-renewable license
• Full support for one year
• Success stories
• Academic information
• Video archives
• … and much more!

How Can You Manage Input Field Content in Cincom Smalltalk?

The Hidden Gems screencast is a series of live coding examples created for passionate Cincom Smalltalk developers like you. These screencasts share valuable insight into the product and inform you about things you may not know about. To view the entire collection of Hidden Gem screencasts, check out our video library here.

In last month’s Hidden Gems screencast, we showed COVID-19 data visualization demo apps using the Next Generation User Interface (NGUI) in Cincom ObjectStudio. This screencast shows how to load and run the new COVID-19 data demo apps that demonstrate how to present data and use graphics in Cincom ObjectStudio NGUI.

In this month’s new screencast, Managing Input Field Content, we will demonstrate techniques on how to handle input-field contents using notifications and keyboardHook.  The examples will demonstrate two techniques for making the field contents all uppercase while also showing some best practices.

On the Hidden Gems videos, we often say “This is easy once you know how,” and using keyboardHook is a good example of this. This screencast is part of the Techniques Series that shows various techniques for accomplishing or solving different tasks using Cincom Smalltalk.

If you have questions, comments or ideas for other Smalltalk examples or suggestions for future Hidden Gems, please email the Cincom Smalltalk Product Team at CSSTARTeam@cincom.com.

Component of the Month: SearchLight

Last month we shared HotDraw, a classic Smalltalk drawing utility and a 2D drawing editor. This month, we are highlighting the SearchLight tool. SearchLight adds additional search-field capabilities in Cincom Smalltalk applications. You can learn more about SearchLight in this Hidden Gems screencast here.

• To learn more about other Contributed Components, click here.
• If you have created something you think would be of value and interest to other Smalltalk developers or could help attract new users to Smalltalk, please apply through the Contributed Application Form here.
• To help developers find, understand, appreciate and utilize your contributed work, please use the guidelines for the final documentation of your contributed work here.

Be a Part of Our Amazing Team!

If you are a software engineer who wants to live where you want and take your rewarding career with you, then Cincom might be the place for you! The Cincom Smalltalk group is looking for a software engineer to join its global development team to develop and maintain Cincom Smalltalk. 

We have a variety of people like Peloton riders, outdoor cyclists, photographers, coffee drinkers, tea aficionados, whisky connoisseurs, volunteers, yogis, chanters, people who sail the seven seas and those who climb the tallest mountains. We have happy people, people with young children, people who send children off to the next room to virtually attend university courses and folks who wait for lockdown to end so they can travel the world and code while doing it. In our team, you could find a friend or perhaps the other three members for your adventure race team!

Job Qualifications:

• A passion for and experience with Smalltalk (Cincom Smalltalk experience a plus)
• Significant C experience
• Language design that involves Smalltalk
• Experience with assembly language, possibly JIT, is a plus.
• Background in developing quality Smalltalk code and delivering product feature documentation
• Problem-solving skills and a can-do attitude are essential in this role.
• Must be able to work individually and in a distributed team environment.
• Experience with API calls and platform libraries on various operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix)

Note: The Cincom Smalltalk Development Team is a fully distributed/remote team … an equal opportunity employer.

We offer a competitive base salary plus benefits.

If you are a software engineer who might be interested in joining a product group that is ready to share Smalltalk with the world via clean code, cool campaigns and much more, please submit your resume/CV and cover letter letting us know why you want to join our team, as well as salary requirements, to Suzanne Fortman with Reference Requisition 4704.

Maybe you are happy where you are, but could you be happier by making Smalltalk an exciting part of your career path? Don’t ignore this opportunity! It never hurts to check it out. Don’t be afraid of change!