Against Overwhelming Odds
There is no shame in failure. But there is always regret in not trying.
Even against overwhelming odds, one should not be afraid to make the effort, if your heart is behind it — if you feel passionate about what you are doing. This can be an affirmation of your strength of character, of your own soul.
I went through this experience recently, tackling a goal that I was told was insurmountable. I take comfort in knowing that I’m in good company…
In recent years, two smartphone vendors have fought an uphill battle against well-entrenched incumbents (Android and iPhone). Both BlackBerry and Microsoft/Nokia made valiant efforts to carve out a piece of the mobility pie. Both are on the verge of exiting the market. (Microsoft have, more or less, ceded the mobile market by retrenching and making smartphones just another piece of their overall Windows strategy [1]. Phones are no longer a key market for them. It’s all about Windows on a range of personal devices, from PCs and laptops to tablets to phones to whatever. It’s about ecosystem.)
For more than a decade, Linux has fought a war against two well-entrenched incumbent operating systems for desktop PCs: Windows and OS X. In 2015, it had amassed the most impressive selection of distributions ever. Mint, Ubuntu MATE, openSUSE, elementary, deepin, Netrunner, etc.,…all wonderful choices. However, Linux still has not gotten much traction in the broader market, seemingly forever stuck at below 2 per cent market share. Perhaps the problem is that it’s an embarrassment of riches — so many choices mean huge market fragmentation. Perhaps it’s poor marketing. Whatever the reason, Linux simply cannot climb out of its small nook.
In the 1990's, several companies tried to compete with Intel in the CPU space, most notably IBM (PowerPC) and DEC (Alpha) [2]. Intel was the absolute king of the hill, and trying to unseat this incumbent was nearly impossible. The x86 architecture dominated the PC and server markets, and eventually AMD was the only company to survive against Intel in these markets with their x86-compatible products.
This year, against well-entrenched incumbents like Java, JavaScript, C# and C++, a pioneering OOP language called Smalltalk tried to expand its niche and gain converts. I led the effort. The strategy? Turn Smalltalk into a digital brand through an advocacy campaign. Use social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Medium, Reddit, WordPress, etc., to put Smalltalk front and centre in the current industry attempt to promote coding as a cool, fun, hip activity [3]. Conduct a national secondary school programming competition to introduce Smalltalk to thousands of young people. Publish a train of articles on Smalltalk and programming languages.
Use crowdfunding as a way to market Smalltalk [4].
A great deal of work went into the national competition and crowdfunding campaign you wouldn’t believe. Marketing videos had to be produced. Advertising graphics. A contest registration website with an administrative interface for the team running the competition. The Kickstarter had to be carefully designed and implemented; it had to be constantly monitored and updated, as well. Social media posts had to be disseminated everywhere!
I also contacted the CEOs of major tech companies, such as Yahoo, HP, Samsung, Baidu, Amazon, BlackBerry, and Electronic Arts, as well as other businesses, such as Rogers and Second Cup. (I even contacted local government.) I appealed to them for corporate sponsorship [5].
How do I measure the success of my Smalltalk Renaissance campaign? Can it even be measured on a timescale as short as one or two years? It may take a long time before we see an increase in Smalltalk usage in our industry, if we see any at all.
Can I measure it by the response I’ve been getting through social media (which has been tepid)? Can I look at TIOBE’s monthly language rankings for changes in Smalltalk’s popularity? Or http://langpop.corger.nl/ for continuous real-time ranking?
“What we do in life echoes in eternity.” — Maximus
I just don’t know whether or not my activities over the past 9 months have made, or will make, any difference. I can tell you that corporate sponsorship was a failure. In particular, the national programming competition was a flop because we couldn’t raise the funds for the scholarship prizes. The obstacles were daunting; the public was lackadaisical about programming languages. Thus, I feel pessimistic.
Ultimately, however, I do not regret making the effort to promote Smalltalk. It was a worthwhile learning experience. It tested all my skills in writing, in creativity, in marketing, in software development. It pushed me mentally and physically. It made me feel alive.
And if companies like BlackBerry and Microsoft can take it on the chin, so can I! And I can come out stronger for it.
I’m proud that I tried. I’m proud that I wasn’t dissuaded by the magnitude of the obstacles. I can sleep easy knowing that I gave it my best.
The strategy? Turn Smalltalk into a digital brand through an advocacy campaign.
But I am also saddened that the world will miss this rare opportunity to transform the software development industry. Writing software should be fun. Writing software should be relatively quick and easy using highly productive tools. Code should be easy to read and maintain. Programming should not be relegated only to those with special aptitude; it should not be elitist.
Moreover, Smalltalk could’ve led the way to “live programming,” where the cognitive cycle of coding and testing is short and efficient. This is the key to its immense productivity.
Seemingly, we are forever stuck with complex languages (e.g., C++, C#, Java, Scala) and capricious languages (e.g., PHP, JavaScript). Smalltalk could’ve made things much easier.
[2] Full disclosure: I was the Project Team Leader of the Windows NT driver group at ATI Technologies working on these architectures. ATI is now part of AMD.
[3] Watch Bill Gates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2Ux2PnJe6E. Watch Mark Zuckerberg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgooqyWMTxk.
[4] See https://medium.com/@trycelery/how-brands-use-crowdfunding-for-kick-ass-marketing-48f36d5a30d0
[5] Languages do better when they have corporate backers. C# and F# have Microsoft. Swift has Apple. Java has Oracle (and previously Sun). Dart and Go have Google. Rust has Mozilla.
