Smalltalk still goes strong

I’m delighted that Smalltalk is still thriving. Back “in the day,” I experimented with Smalltalk, both in college and then later as the editor of AI Expert. Sadly, I never had the opportunity to build a production system using the platform. Too bad.

The news of the day is that Instantiations has updated VAST, its Smalltalk IDE, described below. If you’re not familiar with Smalltalk, visit Smalltalk.org or the Wikipedia.

The balloon is from the April 1981 issue of Byte devoted to the language. I was a subscriber in those days. Wish I’d kept my back issues, but they were tossed during a cross-country move.

If you find Instantiations’ Smalltalk a little pricey for experimentation, check out Squeak, a free, portable implementation.

Instantiations Releases VA Smalltalk Version 8.0

Incorporates new features and support for the latest Smalltalk technologies; modernizes the IDE; adds web services enhancements; new documentation; much more

Portland, Ore. —April 21, 2009 — Instantiations, Inc., a leading provider of software development and productivity solutions, today released VA Smalltalk™ Version 8.0. Updates in V8.0 include new, high-performance web application development functionality for Seaside Core 2.9, IDE enhancements including tabbed browsers and a new documentation delivery system, and enhanced support for industry-standard communications features such as web services to communicate with .NET and other non-Smalltalk-based systems.

“The new features in version 8.0 represent a major step forward in demonstrating Instantiations’ commitment to Smalltalk, and the team has done an excellent job in producing a very high quality and reliable product,” said Louis Andriese, Information Manager, Nationaal Spaarfonds (Delta Lloyd/Aviva PLC). “We are especially excited about the integration of Seaside. We have already developed a web application using v 8.0, and I was delighted to see the amount of functionality we could deliver within a short time. When it comes to serious enterprise development, VA Smalltalk provides the best balance between productivity, reliability and integration in today’s enterprise IT-landscape.”

VA Smalltalk V8.0 is a modern, high-productivity software development environment that is 100% IBM VisualAge® Smalltalk compatible. VA Smalltalk enables software engineers to quickly construct high quality software applications that are portable, high-performance, scalable, and simple to maintain. VA Smalltalk applications fit easily into existing infrastructures and support the latest web application, database and operating system technologies.

“Our customers are running mission critical systems on VA Smalltalk, and they demand world-class support and development to keep their applications operating at peak performance,” said Mike Taylor, Instantiations CEO and co-founder. “We frequently poll our customer base to understand their needs and they continue to tell us that their Smalltalk systems will be in production for years to come. Instantiations will be there to support their needs with continued innovation and strong support.”

Learn more about VA Smalltalk, and see interesting customer case studies during the 2009 VA Smalltalk Summit, a free web event going on today and tomorrow (April 21 – 22, 2009). See www.instantiations.com/VAST/more/st-news+events.html for more details and to register. Session recordings will also be available online after the conference.

New Features in VA Smalltalk V8.0

• Support for Seaside — Support for the current Seaside 2.9 open source web application framework Core, including jQuery, Scriptaculous, RSS and development tools.
• Enhanced IDE — Includes tabbed browsers, use of native Windows widgets, inspector improvements and more.
• Expanded web services support — includes Document/literal wrapped WSDL style and a new web services “Cookbook.”
• New documentation delivery system (web and local) with improved navigation, search, formatting and updated content.
• Much more — VAST libraries have been updated to work with current IT industry technologies (such as Windows Vista®). The latest versions of popular mission-critical databases, such as Oracle 11 and DB2 9, are now supported.

Pricing and Availability

The price per developer for a new license of VA Smalltalk V8.0 is $6,995 and includes one year of support, maintenance, and new releases. Annual support renewals are $1,695 per license. Product upgrades are available at no cost to customers with current support agreements. For additional information and pricing please contact our sales department at (800) 808-3737 or +1-503-598-4900 (outside North America) or by email at email hidden; JavaScript is required. More information can be found on the company’s web site at www.instantiations.com/vast.