Looking at the applications programmed in the world, and looking at the programming languages used, the situation seems not positive for Smalltalk. But for me, Smalltalk is not dead. In the opposite: for me it has growing value, although my daily life is determined by C and C++. How can this be ?
If I have to build a new application or a new module, today I use Smalltalk to design the architecture. In general, if one has to do something new, classes must be identified, what they are doing, which data they work on and more. Extensibility (for new requirements) must be kept on focus, and that there will come an interface into life which could be understand and used by others. Here can help Smalltalk a lot: a few objects doing something is written in short time. Every rearrangement and new ideas can be implemented quickly. Because Smalltalk allows to modify code even in debugger, and allows to evaluate any code snipped at any place - the right design grows in a way also evolution works: simple try it. It is growing in the best sense.
At the end, I got a set of objects, a set of methods and communication network (who talks to who), which can carry the basic functionality. From this, it is easy to get UML - for communicating with managers - and the implementation in the destination language. Now, if - as in my case - the destination language is C++, there are some pitfalls of course. But because the runable Smalltalk model has partitioned the problem in static AND dynamic elements, the problems are small and solveable.
In fact, this is xM in the smallest possible scale....
In the future, I plan to create some ready-to-use moduls which are providing elements always used in our company. Radar data parser, or some kind of common displays or GUI elments are examples. Especially when combined with Seaside, this should result in a great Live UML (xM) Framework.
So Smalltalk is not dead, in the opposite, it is THE tool for robust and failure safe development !
