Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
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From: jahonen@efa.cc.lut.fi (Jarmo Ahonen)
Subject: Re: Digitalk... The end...
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Date: Mon, 27 Feb 1995 18:46:51 GMT
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tgt@lanl.gov (Thierry G. Thelliez) writes:

(munch)

I'm not anything else but a Digitalk customer, but I have a few comments...

>Well, its getting difficult to trust someone here. I got some emails
>from Digitalk saying that they are in good shape. I got some emails
>from competitors saying that I should forget Digitalk !!!!

>I do understand that the 'newsgroups' are a very attractive place for
>commercials and I guess that this is going worse and worse.

>BUT:

>1- I still don't understand why Digitalk stop their Mac product at a
>moment
>when Cross-Platform development is so important.

I suspect that DT does not have anough resources in order to develop
for any other palatform than Intel. (Windows, OS/2)
See how bad job thay have done with their OS/2 support, they promised
a brand new OS/2 release more than a year before they finally shipped
one. And it still does not support API calls or real threads. :-(
But I still decided to puchase their newest release because it seems
to be better value for money than VisualAge.

>2- I also do understand that VisualAge is still poorly tuned and that
>Digitalk is in advance on Windows platforms but I would like some info
>about
>IBM plans in this direction. 

IBM's OS/2 VisualAge is clearly slower than Digitalk's VisualSmalltalk for
OS/2. VisualAge is, however, nicer environment for "visual" development,
IMHO. But my main concern is speed, and that makes VS a much better
choice.

>I bought Digitalk for Mac (v2) which was awfully slow and they stop
>they 
>support few months later. My main concern is to start a project with a
>horse who can run several years.

>I have no preference between Digitalk, Parcplace, QKS, etc... I just
>try to get some (objective) information about their futur before doing
>a 
>choice.

If they can stay ahead the competition in Windows and OS/2 markets,
I suppose that thay will be around quite a long time. But they do
not understand that they are not the only competitor nowadays.
Next time when I'll be faced with such a big change like the change
from VOS2 2.0 -> VisualSmalltalk 3.0 for OS/2, I will seriously
look at alternative vendors if Digitalk will not pay more addition
to OS/2 specific features.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jarmo J. Ahonen			        Computing Centre
Tel: +358 53 621 2516			Lappeenranta University of Technology
Fax: +358 53 621 2350			P.O.Box 20
Email: jarmo.ahonen@lut.fi		53851 Lappeenranta, Finland
