Software development - finally into the 21st century?

I've been thinking lately about the changes I see in the programming landscape. Partly it's a personal journey thing, but there are definitely some major shifts going on.

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Firstly there's the growing acceptance of so called scripting languages like Ruby and Perl as legitimate for application development. There is certainly a shift from pre-compiled to just-in-time compiled and also from static (aka. strong) to dynamic (aka. weak) typing (excellently discussed by Steve Yegge).

Secondly there is a move away from the previously accepted wisdom that it's better to pick a language and stick to it. Domain specific languages have been around for a long time (think SQL, awk, Excel macros) but are now being accepted in less traditional areas. Although some people are still confused about how to decide what language/environment to use, many are starting to see the wisdom in choosing a language that allows for the most natural description of the real world problem.

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I have been enamoured with Smalltalk for some time. I have yet to use it in a commercial project for many reasons but one is the difficulty of deploying it to what users might call a "normal environment" (eg. Apache/Linux for web apps, Windows for gui apps).

The lack of integration with "modern" gui operating systems is particularly frustrating because when it comes to rapid gui app development, nothing comes close to Smalltalk. Not even Cocoa. It' not just the language or the frameworks, it's the entire environment. And that is the problem, because it's not immediately obvious how you can mess with the smalltalk os environment and not lose some of the power.

Vista Smalltalk changes everything. I've been following this guys blog for some time, but I think this is the first screenshot. Just look at those Vista native windows. A corporate PC user won't realise that he or she is using an application that finally realises the power of 1970s computing, but the developer will. And for hosted applications - just see how identical the in-browser application is - with no web specific application code.

I'm no Microsoft fan, but I will give them some advice. Give this guy money now. Lot's of it. If the libraries were shipped with Vista, this would beat Cocoa hand over fist (excluding multimedia, OpenGl... ok in a whole bunch of non-corporate areas).

Sheesh - I might even need to own my first ever Windows machine. At least I can dual boot a MacBook ;)

Update: As pointed out by a reader in the comments, Dolphin Smalltalk achieves the same sort of platform integration for existing windows versions. I must confess to being ignorant about Dolphin Smalltalk since I had previously avoided it because I traditionally avoid windows. I promise to investigate it and report back! Certainly products such as Cincom Smalltalk use their own widgets rather than native OS ones which is another (perceived at least) issue, but I'll hold judgement on Dolphin until I have checked it out.

Update 2: I've been taken to task for my admittedly "hand waving" statement that Smalltalk has been traditionally difficult to delploy. Without stating it, I was really combining technical issues with human issues. Human issues being your client or manager saying something like "that deployment procedure looks a bit wierd - and the widgets are non-native. You'll never be allowed to use that".

What I am excited about (and unashamedly hoping to promote) is that now is a time when we have the chance to promote uncommon thinking when it comes to software development. This is why I specifically linked the changes in attitude to scripting languages with this new Smalltalk framework.

I apologise that some of my reasoning was not clearly spelt (or thought) out and that some people may have taken away the thought that there has never been a Smalltalk implementation useful for traditional application deployment.

Thanks to the commenters in the comments and via email.