It's worth mentioning that every time I watch Joe Biden or Antony Blinken or Jake Sullivan or Nancy Pelosi or anyone from the US government hold a press conference about China, their words are deceitful and aggressive. That's not my imagination.
When the general public sees all this on television, it is extremely influential (such is the power of television media). And, of course, all of this is repeated on social media. So I don't think it's a strawman at all.
I've followed Western media studiously for years. NYT, WSJ, CNN, BBC, etc. I've yet to see a story about China that doesn't spin things negatively for China. It doesn't have to be "extreme reporting."
If China had remained a backward, undeveloped country like it was in the 1970s, the world would pay China no heed. China would get zero attention; it would be completely ignored.
In my experience, type-related programming bugs are very rare (less than 2%). That's why I'm not in the least bit concerned with whether or not a language is statically-typed or dynamically-typed. I use both as needed. My favourite languages are Go and Smalltalk.
Smalltalk allows me to do live programming with great ease. This is a huge productivity amplifier. Smalltalk's productivity is much higher than that of any major language in use today.
Indentation-sensitivity is so popular that only one language in the Top 20 programming languages has it. That's nearly 40 years after I saw my first indentation-sensitive language: occam.
Indentation-sensitivity seemed like a great idea in 1983. I'm not convinced today.
I am not Richard Eng. Why would you think that anyone who supports Smalltalk can only be him? Do you really believe there is only one Smalltalk fan throughout the world?
Richard is the most prolific promoter of Smalltalk in years. So I support and applaud his efforts. Why is this so difficult to accept?
This article is mainly about the programming competition. What's wrong with that kind of evangelism? I think it's a great idea. It certainly attracts attention to Smalltalk (Pharo), a relatively obscure language.
If you're grousing about the author's comparison to other languages, he's not showing disrespect by pointing out that their approach to language promotion hasn't produced the desired outcome. He's simply stating the truth.
This is a decidedly peculiar attitude. The web is a vast global network of hyperlinks — that was its original intent. A web user is expected to follow the hyperlinks to discover more information.
The author provided the key hyperlinks: https://smalltalk.tech.blog/2020/03/07/jrmpc-2020-award-winn... and the YouTube video link, as well, which also links to the main JRMPC website. Once you get to the JRMPC website, you can learn ALL about the competition in great detail, including the source code to the competition!
Moreover, the smalltalk.tech.blog itself shows the author's approach to evangelizing the language. It's one of pure marketing, trying to engage the audience with flashy visuals and more hyperlinks to examples, resources, etc. It's a very nice layout.
The whole point of the web is that a single document doesn't have to cram in all the information in one location. Think of this particular article as an "executive summary." You want to learn more? Follow the hyperlinks and do a deep dive.
The article was never intended to spoon-feed you. Use the web as intended. I did, and I'm more knowledgeable as a result.
Evangelization is "preaching"; it's essentially advertising or marketing.
There's no one way to preach or advertise. One can take a number of different approaches. Presenting technical information is one way, the most common way. It's how most languages are promoted. But most languages never succeed with this approach. Most languages never gain much mind share.
So the author has taken another approach, something that is seldom attempted. The programming competition is an original and clever idea.
I'm not sure how one can "demonstrate the benefits" of a programming language. Most languages have been used successfully in software projects (e.g., Crystal, Elixir, F#, Haxe, Julia, Nim, etc.). Does trotting out these projects prove anything?
Absolutely. Pharo is much like Java: it's VM-based, so Pharo software will run on any platform that has a Pharo VM. This includes Windows, macOS, and Linux.
And if you use PharoJS, which transpiles to JS, the same software will run in any web browser, and on mobile devices (using Apache Cordova).
I disagree. Many languages are technically excellent, but not gaining much mind share. They languish in the job market. For example, at Indeed, Clojure has 393 job postings, Elixir has 430, F# has 156, Haskell has 419, Julia has 706, Lua has 562, and Nim has 81. These are for the U.S. at the time of writing.
Python has 76,979 job postings, Java has 72,743, and even lowly Perl has 14,802. Technical merit is not enough; those lesser languages need marketing.
The fact is, language adoption in the IT industry is very much a matter of luck, fad and fashion.
There's nothing sneaky about it. Right at the start of the third paragraph, it says: "I’m a Smalltalk evangelist and Pharo is one of these languages."
The author is presenting one example, and pointing to a Pharo programming competition as the key exhibit. It's a pretty impressive competition, too. Impressive prizes. Impressive competition map and Pac-Man style game.
When the general public sees all this on television, it is extremely influential (such is the power of television media). And, of course, all of this is repeated on social media. So I don't think it's a strawman at all.