Cincom Smalltalk 2017 Roadmap

The 25th Annual European
Smalltalk User Group
Conference
September 5, 2017
Cincom Smalltalk™
2017 Roadmap
Speaker: ArdenThomas, Cincom Smalltalk Product Manager
@ArdenTCST (Twitter)

Proprietary & Confidential
Agenda
• CincomTalks
• Product Management
• Product Changes
• Smalltalk Advocacy

Cincom Smalltalk ESUG 2017Talks
• Cincom Smalltalk Roadmap – this talk
• HTTP/2 support in SiouX
• How to configure for HTTP2 requests
• Security considerations
• Design considerations
• Demo
• AppeX and JavaScript Support Enhancements
• Using external JS library to ‘beautify’ JavaScript code
• executed by a script in a web browser
• Security Enhancements
• AEAD (Authenticated Encryption w/ Additional Data) ciphers
• Elliptic Curve Cryptography on Windows
• TLSv1.3 readiness
@ArdenTCST #ESUG17COMPANY CONFIDENTIAL | ©2017 Cincom Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Cincom Smalltalk Product
Management

Cincom Smalltalk Product Management
Goals
• Keep improving and advancing our Smalltalk products
• New Operating Systems
• Standards
• Customer needs
• Respond to customer needs
• Listen to Customers
• Customer involvement
• Customer user stories
• Customer/community mini-surveys
• Help Attract new users to Smalltalk

Product ManagementThemes
“Flow”
• “Flow” is a state of mind where focus,
productivity and performance go off the
charts.
• Developers want to take Smalltalk to the next
level, at flow state productivity.

API
Experienced Smalltalk customers customize their
environment, workbench tools, and application
production to be exactly what they need for
maximum effectiveness and productivity …
New work should consider and accommodate:
• GUI
• Browser
• Tell us!

Compatibility and upgrading
PM position:
• Reduce risk by being on modern, supported releases
• Provide as much compatibility as makes sense
while moving the product forward
PM mantra: If you make the customer change code, make
the benefits clearly worth the investment

Performance

Legacy
Legacy frameworks may be:
• Obsolete
• Antiquated
• Replaced by newer technology
We keep some of these frameworks available in the product, as
some customers:
• may want to use them longer
• need extra time to port to a newer technology
• may wish to continue with and maintain the framework for
themselves.
Legacy frameworks have minimal support and will not be enhanced
http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/main/products/legacy-framework-availability/

Cincom Smalltalk Products
Smalltalk IS Innovation

ObjectStudio
The Business Analyst’sThinkingTool
VisualWorks
The Multi-lingual, Do-Anything,
Cross-Platform DevelopmentTool

Proprietary & Confidential@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
PAST
(Recent)
COMPANY CONFIDENTIAL | ©2017 Cincom Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Past / Present / Future - Products
@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
BeganVersion “2” changes
• Big improvements introduced

@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
Text2
• Document
• Word wrapping
• Line numbers
• Paragraph numbers
• Line numbers
• Line striping
• Hidden characters
• Read-only
• Paragraph
• Direction
• Alignment
• Paragraph spacing
• Alignment
• Indent, first line
indent, padding
• Left, right, center,
justify
• Fonts
• Family, size, color, bold/italic
• Variable sizes in same line
• Adornments
• strike through
• underline, double underlines,
dashed underline, more
• overline
• Shadow
• Actions
• clicking on a text can run code, open
a web browser
• Annotations
• Annotate with text
• hover-help
• Wrap, dodge, stretch
• Cursor change property
• Bullseye, caret, crosshair, database, earth,
hand, marker, scroll, square, wait, hyperlink
• Sparklines
• Vertical alignment within lines
• Bidirectional content
• with support for embedded
direction marks
• Unicode
• font measuring
• rendering
• Images in documents
• Lists
• bulleted
• Numbered
• with international
numbering schemes
• Sparse editing history to support
large documents

@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
AutoComplete2
• Runs as navigable pop-up
• Tab to choose
• Arrows to navigate
• Does multi-argument methods
• Classes, Shared vars
• Knows pragmas
• Understands recursion, self, super
• ExtensibleAPI
• Shortcuts for modal dialogs
• Browse method (Hidden Gem)
• Show in context, shortens task
• Improvements to support multiple
languages

@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
Source Code Editor 2
• Autocomplete,Themes, Annotations!
• API, pluggable, DSL support
UI Look&Feel 2 (UISkinning)
Host rendered for fidelity
• EmulatedWindows
• Red Default
• Green Default
Browser enhancements
• Forward/Backward Navigation History
• Browse method (in class context)

@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
VM improvements
• UnicodeWindowsVM’s
• 64 bitVM’s revamped
• Windows 64 bitVM
• GC improvements
Other improvements
• Delay alternatives
• Atomic Loading (Store)

@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
VM
• Upgraded build chain
• Windows
• Mac OS X
• Linux
• VisualWorks Loader nowVisualWorks XL
• Windows/Unix/Linux

@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
Foundation Improvements
• COM revamped, COM 64, ActiveX, Desktop
Launcher
• Database driver updates/enhancements
• GLORP enhancements

@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
SiouX - What is SiouX?
“Build an HTTP server with the goal of squeezing as much
scalability and performance out of it as we can”
AppeX - What is AppeX?
• Modern Web Framework
• Current tech: HTML5, JavaScript, Ajax, JSON, XHR
• Open – use any JavaScript library you like
• Seamlessly connects to the server (Smalltalk)
• Very lightweight and flexible

@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
Net / Protocols
• LDAP
• Improved and moved from contributed
to supported
• LDAPS
• Uses aTLS connection for Secure LDAP

@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
Net / Protocols
• Linux-PAM support
• OAuth 2.0 Bearer tokens support

Past / Present / Future - ObjectStudio
@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
Next Generation UI
• Lets you make the most of what Windows
has to offer
New Launcher
• Convenience
• Productivity
Windows 10 Certification

PRESENT

@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
On Deck* for Introduction:
• ObjectStudio 8.9
• VisualWorks 8.3

@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
VM
• NewVMs
• MacOS / OS X 64
• MacOS / OS X 32 retina display support
• Linux PowerPC 64

@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
VM
• New PreviewVMs
• AIX 64
• Linux ARM (Raspberry Pi)
• 64 bit Permspace previewVM’s
• Windows hi-dpi preview work
(w/parcel loaded)

@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
Net / Protocols
HTTP/2
• HTTP/2 is a major revision of HTTP
• Major browsers support it
• 15.9% of websites support HTTP/2
• Better use of things like server push
• Can use with SiouX to create an
HTTP/2 server

@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
Tools / GUI
• Help2
• Cleanup/removal of proprietary help
• Layout foundation work
• Foundation for Painter2
• Text2 BIDI work

@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
Tools / GUI
• Help2
• DITA/XML standards based
• Replaces the proprietary Arbor help
• Used for IDE help system
• Can be used for application help

@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
Tools / GUI
• Refinements
• Look and Feel 2 (UISkinning)
• Refinements (font selection)
• Improvements (widget sizing)
• Fixes

@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
Store
• Loading performance
• Recursive BLOB loading (Binary Large Objects)

@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
Over time we made efforts to re-use and
share frameworks between the two products…

FUTURE

The Sharing ...

Has grown ....

@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
NextVersions are to be “Version 9” for both
Products
Initially just product version numbers
brought together
Taking it to the next step …

... Made Simpler Still!

@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
Future Directions
• Incremental improvements
• Infrastructure upgrades
• Respond to Customer needs
• Improve productivity
• Improve API

@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
Future Directions - Incremental improvements
• Improve the product
• Make it easy / reasonable to port to

@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
Future Directions - Modernization
• Continue Infrastructure Upgrades
• Version 2
• Modernization
• examples
• TLS
• HTTP2
• Browser productivity improvements

@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
Future Directions – Customer Needs
• Respond to Customer needs
• Often hard to anticipate
• We encourage feedback and updates on
your usage and any potential future items

@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
Future Directions - Flow
• Productivity & API
• Productivity improvements
• API improvements

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Smalltalk Advocacy
Getting the word out on Smalltalk’s benefits
- addictive interactiveness & productivity
Monthly Smalltalk Digest
- Keep community engaged!

Smalltalk Advocacy
BattleSnake Competition Finalist
• Web based AI game competition
• VisualWorks / AppeX / SiouX stack
• “Medusa” Jerry/Alena Kott algorithm
• Second place of 150 team entries!
 Beat almost all company & team entries

Smalltalk Advocacy
StackOverflow Developer Survey 2015
+ Good survey on current Languages
- No Smalltalk!
2016 – Let’s change this!

Smalltalk Advocacy
StackOverflow Developer Survey 2016
• “Most PopularTechnologies – Other”
• Smalltalk listed!
• Next year … big improvement?
• What could this imply?!
 Opportunity for Smalltalk

Smalltalk Advocacy
StackOverflow Developer
Survey 2017
 #2 Most Loved
Language!

Contact Us
@ArdenTCST #ESUG17
Suzanne Fortman
Director of SmalltalkGlobal Operations
sfortman@cincom.com
@SuzCST (Twitter)
ArdenThomas
Product Manager
athomas@cincom.com
@ArdenTCST (Twitter)

Cincom Smalltalk 2017 Roadmap

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