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I can't see any reason for wanting to develop software for the .Net platform. C++ is a much better language.
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It looks like I might get to do some Seaside (with WebVelocity) development before the year is out. It will be nice to get back to the language/environment on which I cut my professional teeth learning OO - and have been yearning for for 12 years since, while I've worked with inferior Java and .NET environments.
If it would only last longer this time around...
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Smalltalk is cute, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's superior to Java or .NET. Maybe Java is inferior, because you can't pass thunks around. On the .NET side, there's C# that has pretty much everything Smalltalk has and then some (except meta classes).
What is that makes Smalltalk superior in your eyes?
--
Kein Mitleid Für Die Mehrheit
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To say Smalltalk is "cute" reveals a lack of any meaningful experience with the language and platform - unless you are speaking of something like "eToys" or some such educational environment.
Java originated from an idea to create an (optionally) statically-typed variant of Smalltalk (Strongtalk IIRC), but typically they were afraid to put off the c++ peeps and omitted much of the more advanced mechanisms. At least Java helped grab more mind-share for Virtual Machines and automatic memory management.
C# origins are once removed from Java's, but at least there was a desire to progress toward more powerful mechanisms - most of which have always been available in Smalltalk. C# has helped grab more mindshare for lambda's and hopefully soon dynamism. But in the end, there are decisions that were made early-on (perhaps because of it's Java origins) like not having a closed object system, and including explicit value types (instead of a smarter compiler) that will keep .NET form getting all the way there.
The one way both Java and C# are superior to Smalltalk is in community size and involvement. Smalltalk had a too long period of sky-high platform prices by vendors with unrealistic visions of how to gain mind-share, and a gratuitous sense snobbish superiority. Since then, things have improved greatly with more than one Open Source implementations, and all but one commercial vendor (that I am aware of) offering a fully featured "free" version of their platform for non-commercial use.
So to answer your question about what makes Smalltalk superior in my eyes:
I have actually worked professionally with all the languages/platforms discussed here and have at least 3 years of "getting paid" experience with each (8 years in the case of C#/.NET, which I develop in every day). I know from experience that Smalltalk is superior.
So you can decide to gain the experience yourself, gain some understanding about where C# is in relation to Smalltalk (10-15 years behind it), bone-up on some history and learn about the origins of OOP and its progression and what it truly means...or not 
I don't care either way. And I wasn't trying to start a flame-war; just making a statement on a CodeProject survey...
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Enjoy the fact that in SmallTalk 1 + 2 * 3 evaluates to 9.
Seriously, if you like SmallTalk, maybe you should try Objective-C on Apple platforms. Cynical types say it has the elegance of C and runtime speed of Smalltalk, but somehow I doubt it was its design goal 
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I know, it's the ugly stepchild language, but many of us use and work with Visual Basic (dot-net, finally) every day. Besides, VB is not that bad: The site works and, with dot-net, is getting easier to maintain.
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Since they're including languages, I'm surprised VB isn't there. Personally, I prefer the syntax of languages based on C (C#, C++, etc.) But C# and VB are functionally equivalent in .NET, for the most part. I always develop new projects in C#, but I don't mind working on an existing VB project.
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I must agree. Sane "professional approach" should be to "forget VB and start using C# in new projects". But that might be so easily misunderstood so I clarify, that I also agree with "but I don't mind working on an existing VB project". Existing projects do carry with them perhaps years and years of development that keeps them being quite valuable and much cheaper to maintain than redeveloping them.
So yes, VB should be an option. It is very likely that today existing project still lives as maintained product within couple of years.
A note about Why C# instead of VB?; For a VB programmer its realistical to move from VB to C# (with observing experience) even though they need to be hit with a shovel couple of times in the head to forget some odd boundaries set by the logic theyre so accustomed to in VB. Once they get into C# they most likely love the ride and almost cry in happiness how easy everything becomes all of sudden (this is also with observing experience).
I cannot speak for myself as even when I developed one large system with multiple applications all in VB (for almost 10 years), I still had long background with C/C++. I was never really content with VB and getting green light to use C# in new project was a relief!
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I've been working in C# at work for three years now, and I've been working in VB (5, 6, and finally .NET) for 10. There are a few things I think are really cool in C# (anonymous delegates springs to mind), but to be honest I STILL prefer the VB syntax (I'd much rather see "End Try" than "}"), and many of my home projects are written in VB. I don't think that makes me a bad programmer. :p
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Well, I have been working in VB.NET projects since the first Visual Studio .NET version, both Web and Windows Forms, medium and large projects. The team is very experienced with VB and the learning curve is small for beginners, we do not need to add event handlers by hand, we have XML literals (that we use a lot), we do not have to search for enigmatic sequences of {}[] and many of the differences between the two languages are disappearing version to version. Why should we move to C#? I have seen projects crashing just because of that "sane professional approach", where the real impact of this choice is not evaluated.
Best regards,
rferj
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You really saying you've seen projects crash because they chose C# and not VB?
What I meant in my original post in a nutshell is the same you said aswell; VB and C# are "the same" these days, theres no much difference... and I was merely stating my opinion that "C# is most likely the way its going to evolve into".
And remember I was talking about new projects. To make it more clear I was making an attempt to talk about new projects which are not relying on existing code so much. Also that antipathy for {}[] is just a minor detail to me and I cannot see why its being brought up so much... Maybe I am wrong and my past experience with C/C++ is making me so much more comfortable in C# in general that my judgement is clouded. Also I am affected by the "general attitude" among our architects in our company.
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I used to program in C++ then shifted to web development with PHP then I worked in a company that all of its projects are built in VB.NET so I had to work with it, it wasn't very bad (I preferred the C syntax at first but I was very comfortable with VB Syntax) then I had a new project with My friend in C#, After working with it I Said OH MY GOD, the IDE (VS) Support in vb.net is 10 times better then C#.
I was shocked but the real time debugger (which it doesn't exists in C# till VS2008 SP1), Intellisense, helping tips and code formater in VB.NET IDE was so much better then C#.
Microsoft fixed it up in VS2008 SP1 and it still not better then VB.NET in VS2005 (C# in VS2005 was uncomparable with VB.NET).
I searched and found this
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1081471/why-is-intellisense-support-for-c-lacking-when-compared-to-vb-net[^]
so to me I prefer VB.NET not because of the syntax but the support in the IDE (VS) is much better and more comfortable (maybe because VB.NET team in Microsoft has more experience)
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Scott Liddicoat wrote: I always develop new projects in C#, but I don't mind working on an existing VB project.
Same here. I prefer C# but don't mind VB as such. To be honest I find the IDE support for VB more annoying. There are lots of little things that are not implemented as slickly as for C#.
Kevin
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Pretty sure most of us will be targeting Dublin, hopefully sometime next year.
Since it includes a light weight (Enterprise) service bus my guess alot of us will target it quite early on.
-We live in interesting times.
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I've never heard of Dublin. Where can I find more info? Google only lets me know about Ireland which is all very interesting but not quite what you're talking about I'll guess? A decent AppHost for .Net could certainly change the way I do things.
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I'm surprised that Cocoa's not on list?! If Mac's keep growing like this, I bet many of us would seriously consider developing on Mac...
- Stop thinking in terms of limitations and start thinking in terms of possibilities -
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My business, at least from what I can tell, will not be able to use Macs unless the hospital industry starts using Macs.
At home, all I have are Macs, and it's been that way for the last 5 years. I do some Cocoa programming, but it's only for fun.
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Jason Barry wrote: My business, at least from what I can tell, will not be able to use Macs unless the hospital industry starts using Macs.
Unless you used Cocotron[^] to cross-compile Cocoa apps for Windows...
Java, Basic, who cares - it's all a bunch of tree-hugging hippy cr*p
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Awesome! I didn't know about that... thanks.
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May be in next few years ROBOTIC Programming will take over ..Application programming
who knows.... 
If the message is useful for U then please Rate This message...
Be a good listener...Because Opprtunity knoughts softly...N-Joy
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OpenGL is too low level. You would need some sort of high level engine on top before anyone would use it.
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