Cincom Smalltalk™ Digest: May Edition
The Cincom Smalltalk Digest is a monthly publication that provides news, updates and resources to our customers, partners and users. This month’s newsletter includes the following:
CUSTOMERS and PARTNERS
- A Note from the Support and Engineering Teams
- Why Is the Cincom Smalltalk Resolutions NewsletterValuable for Customers and Partners?
BEGINNERS, FREELANCERS and DEVELOPERS
- Looking to Try a New Developer Tool?
- How Does SUISA Use Cincom® ObjectStudio® to Harmonize Music and Money with Its Applications?
- What Do Smalltalk, Puzzles and Tim Ferriss Have in Common?
CUSTOMERS and PARTNERS
This section of the Cincom Smalltalk Digest is dedicated to our loyal customers and partners.
A Note from the Support and Engineering Teams
Cincom Smalltalk Support and Engineering value our customers’ feedback on our published and pending resolutions.
Your feedback about a pending resolution expedites the inclusion of its solution within the upcoming product releases. It also facilitates the publishing of the resolution to the Cincom Smalltalk Customer community.
From the Cincom Smalltalk group to all who provide this important feedback for our continued product-improvement efforts, we want to express a warm “thank you!”
Why Is the Cincom Smalltalk Resolutions Newsletter Valuable for Customers and Partners?
The Cincom Smalltalk Resolutions Newsletter is a subscription-only publication that was created over a decade ago exclusively for customers and partners. This useful publication allows subscribers to quickly scan through Cincom Smalltalk resolutions delivered in the previous month.
Feedback from customers and partners has helped us shape the newsletter into what it is today. Following reader feedback, our product marketing team stepped in to add more information for those who want an easier way to keep up with Cincom and Cincom Smalltalk. Of course, we never want to deviate from the Resolutions Newsletter’s original purpose, so product marketing includes top stories, technical and developer events, tips and techniques and other important web links. These links assist you in navigating our large website and provide contact information for our developers and product team.
With the release of Cincom Smalltalk 9.2, there’s no better time to be a subscriber! If you are interested in receiving this monthly newsletter with updates on patches for Cincom Smalltalk, click here.
BEGINNERS, FREELANCERS and DEVELOPERS
This section of the Cincom Smalltalk Digest is dedicated to new Smalltalkers, freelancers, and experienced developers, with informative articles and specific Smalltalk examples for learning new skills or honing existing ones using Cincom Smalltalk.
Looking to Try a New Developer Tool?
For users who are not ready to make the investment in a full license, but are still interested in trying out Cincom Smalltalk, the Personal Use License (PUL) is a perfect fit. The PUL is ideal for developers who are looking to hone their skills with a new developer tool, and it gives users the freedom to evaluate our products before deciding that Cincom Smalltalk is the best fit for their business or project needs.
Listen as Suzanne Fortman, the Cincom Smalltalk Director of Operations, shares more about this trial license here.
The Cincom Smalltalk website is where people go when they want to learn about and evaluate Cincom ObjectStudio and Cincom® VisualWorks®. Getting your trial version of the PUL is easy, requiring only a simple form to be filled out.
To start exploring Cincom Smalltalk and all that it can do for you, click here.
How Does SUISA Use Cincom ObjectStudio to Harmonize Music and Money with Its Applications?
SUISA is the Cooperative Society of Music Authors and Publishers in Switzerland
and was founded as a cooperative association in 1923. They now have approximately 36,000 composers, lyricists and music publishers as members. SUISA collects the royalties due to its members for the public use of its works in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. SUISA manages the rights of 2 million right holders through reciprocity agreements with over 100 sister societies around the world. SUISA employs 200 people in its Zurich, Lausanne and Lugano offices.
Mint Digital Services was founded in 2017 by SUISA and the US performance rights organization SESAC. The company manages invoicing and administration for SESAC; its subsidiary, the Harry Fox Agency; and SUISA’s transnational music licensing businesses with online providers. It also provides services to publishers.
SUISA is in charge of what is known as “small rights” such as non-dramatic musical works, concert versions of dramatic works and musical works for feature and television films. SUISA grants licenses to its customers—concert organizers, record producers, broadcasting companies and others—allowing them to perform, broadcast, distribute and reproduce music.
The development environment that SUISA chose to build its interface-driven, transaction-oriented services was Cincom Smalltalk. Nick Theofanidis, the Manager of the Databases and System Administration Group of SUISA, said:
“We wanted to develop some new applications for the Windows platform and, more recently, for the web, so we initially chose Cincom ObjectStudio. But when Cincom VisualWorks bundled with ObjectStudio as Cincom Smalltalk, we wanted to take advantage of the VisualWorks web technology and develop the user interfaces of our services using VisualWorks.”
Learn more about why SUISA chose Cincom Smalltalk here.
What Do Smalltalk, Puzzles and Tim Ferriss Have in Common?
Arden Thomas has been a Smalltalk enthusiast for over three decades and considers it arguably the best designed computer language ever created. Arden is the Smalltalk product manager and creates screencasts about how to best use the product (“Hidden Gems”) and introduces fun ways, such as building puzzle apps, stock charts, parsers, reusable frameworks and more, to get the most out of Smalltalk. Recently, Arden came across a few resources that he’d like to share:
You may think of puzzles as simply a way to pass the time, but they can teach problem-solving, creative thinking and even software application development! Tim Ferriss, author, prominent podcaster and one of the best interviewers around, recently interviewed A.J. Jacobs who is the author of several books including the most recent, The Puzzler, which is about, as you might surmise, puzzles! There are some interesting insights and perspectives on puzzles in the interview. The Fifteen Puzzle, a puzzle we use as an example you can build in our quick-start guide, is briefly mentioned too.
Check out these resources:
- The Interview: “A.J. Jacobs — How to Be Less Furious and More Curious” https://tim.blog/2022/04/22/a-j-jacobs-2/
- The book The Puzzler: https://www.amazon.com/Puzzler-Baffling-Puzzles-Crosswords-Jigsaws/dp/0593136713/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20
- Learn to program: Learn to program by building the 15-Puzzle application!
Our Quick Start guide walks you through it step by step.
- Learn to program in a language that helped invent modern computing and created the term, object-oriented-programming.
- Learning Smalltalk is a skill that will make you better in almost any programming language.
Want to be less furious and more curious in computer programming? Are you new to programming or just learning Smalltalk? If so, check out these additional resources: