Is it worth learning smalltalk?

Question

SQL

Quite often I had to read statements about how smalltalk is a very productive language.
Does anyone have real experience with it? Is it worth studying it, and if so, which implementation is relevant today?

Answer 1

The productivity of a language is not determined by its syntax, but by:
1) The level of your knowledge of this language
2) Experience with it
3) The presence of manuals, documentation and books on it
4) The presence of a community around this language
5) The presence of third-party libraries
6) The availability of tools for working (compilers, debuggers, development environments and editors, etc.)
7) Correspondence of the task domain to the domain of the language (is it productive to write a mobile game in Cobol?)
Syntax is also not that important, but if you sort by the importance of factors , I think it will be somewhere at the end of the list.
Despite all of the above, it is always good to learn new programming languages ​​for general education, especially languages ​​with paradigms that are different from the languages ​​you are familiar with (for example, it is worth learning a functional language if you have only worked with procedural ones). In terms of application in the industry, less popular, academic, “conceptual” (for example, religiously pure (oop / functional / whatever)), highly specialized languages ​​- as a rule, do not meet the above requirements well.

Answer 2

Perhaps this should be approached from a different point of view. Why do you need it?
If you want to solve applied problems, it is easier to use standard C/Java languages. At least because you can always find an adequate manual or ask knowledgeable people. If you just want to "swap the thinker", then this will be, maybe not the best choice, but worth it. Well, if you want to connect your life with Objective-C programming in the future, then you should definitely understand at least something from SmallTalk.

Answer 3

Implementations - Squeak, Pharo.
It only makes sense to engage in general development and subsequent transition to ObjC, which grew out of it.
By itself, the language (like CL) is interesting in that it is not at all a descendant of C, a sort of relic from the time of the formation of CS.

Answer 4

I ’ll add Amber to the implementations , which works on top of JavaScript with all the consequences ... 

Pharo seems to be the best by far. Squeak can be interesting from the point of view of experimenting / playing around, but here Pharo has already almost caught up with him.

As for productivity, I can say for myself: I rate my productivity on Smalltalk at least 3 times higher than on Java/C#. The negative point is that there are relatively few libraries, but as practice shows, in a significant percentage of cases this can be solved one way or another - it all depends on the task.

As a summary: Having spent a significant part of my programming experience on Smalltalk, I don’t regret it at all, although I don’t have any money at the moment. And I hope to find an opportunity to earn directly from this knowledge in the future.