Reducing the friction when upgrading: Two new browsers

Many of you that follow this blog are, or will be involved in projects that require upgrading applications from one version of Smalltalk to a newer one. Those upgrades can often be difficult, particularly when there are multiple versions being skipped.

As part of the Support team at Cincom®, I and my teammates are often called on by our customers to be the “first responders” when large obstacles get in the way during an upgrade.

Based on feedback from our customer’s experiences, I have created two new browsers that I hope will reduce some of the friction involved in upgrading VisualWorks® and ObjectStudio® applications. Please follow the links below for full details about these two new Contributed Components.

Introducing the Senders of Deprecated Browser

The Senders of Deprecated browser is a new contributed package for Cincom® ObjectStudio® 8.6 or Cincom® VisualWorks® 8.0 and above. It is designed to help you track down, evaluate, and hopefully eliminate any places in your code that are calling methods that have been marked as deprecated by the Engineering team at Cincom®, or by other programmers. It requires at least VisualWorks® 8.0 or ObjectStudio® 8.6 to operate. The browser can be opened by picking the “Browse -> Senders of Deprecated” menu item from the VisualWorks Launcher window, or by executing the following code:

Smalltalk.DeprecatedSendersBrowser openDeprecatedSenders.

Introducing BrowseOverrides

This new contributed package is designed to help users quickly review any methods in an image that have been overridden by extensions in other packages. In preliminary testing, these extensions have been shown to work in VisualWorks® 7.6 or ObjectStudio® 8.1 and versions after those.

This cross-promotion has been approved by the other primary volunteers on this blog, and I thank them for the opportunity to share this information with you.

Good luck with your upgrades,
James T. Savidge

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Smalltalk Jobs – 12/19/15

  • Bangalore, India – SmallTalk Developer 5 – Associate (Job ID 150113031) through J.P. Morgan
    • Required Skills:
      • The candidate should have an understanding of an object oriented programming language (e.g. Java, C++, C#, Python, Ruby, Smalltalk) and their underlying principles
      • Data modelling
      • Code version control
      • Understanding of performant coding and optimisations
      • Enthusiasm for increasing knowledge of financial markets and products is essential
      • Willingness to adopt an agile development process
    • Additional listings: J.P. Morgan, Net Employment Services, ABC Consultants
  • Minneapolis, MNSmalltalk Lead through Sogeti
    • Required Skills:
      • Working knowledge of source code control repositories specifically PVCS repositories using Smalltalk VSE/VW, C, Perl and Sybase database technologies
      • Working knowledge of App Lifecycle Mgmt that involve principles version control and deployments
      • Ability to work off hours and on an “on-call” basis
      • Experience in L2/L3 support of packaged and custom applications
      • Working knowledge if ITIL process
      • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or relevant IT experience of 10+ years
      • Working knowledge of T-SQL and relational data models
      • Ability to work across a matrixed organization in a multi-vendor environment
      • Working knowledge of Business Reporting
    • Wanted Skills:
      • Working knowledge in the Grain Contracting, Settlement, Operations and Futures Trading business area
      • Vendor management experience
      • Working knowledge of SmallTalk
      • Working knowledge of Sybase
  • Jersey City, NJ – Technology Architect through Infosys
    • Required Skills:
      • Bachelor’s degree or foreign equivalent required from an accredited institution. Will also consider three years of progressive experience in the specialty in lieu of every year of education
      • At least 7 years of experience with Information Technology
    • Wanted Skills:
      • At least 5 years of experience in technology consulting, enterprise and solutions architecture and architectural frameworks
      • At least 5 years of experience in Java, Java Script, WebLogic, Finacle, Smalltalk, IBM WegSphere Skills
      • At least 5 years of experience in project execution
      • Experience in defining new architectures and ability to drive an independent project from an architectural stand point
      • Analytical skills
      • At least 5 years of experience in thought leadership, white papers and leadership/mentoring of staff and internal consulting teams
      • Experience and desire to work in a management consulting environment that requires regular travel
  • Miami, FL – Smalltalk Developer through ReqRoute
    • Required Skills:
      • 3-4 Years of strong hands-on development experience in Visual Works 7.9 Small-Talk Development
      • Should have excellent knowledge on the OOPS Concepts
    • Wanted Skills:
      • Should have experience on .Net technologies
      • Should have good verbal and written communication skill
      • Should work independently in Smalltalk technology
    • Additional listings: ReqRoute, ReqRoute, Net2Source, Net2Source, E-solutions, ESI

Updates on 1/9/16, 2/6/16: Added a listing for the position in Bangalore, India.

Updates on 1/9/16, 2/6/16, 2/16/16, 3/6/16: Marked out a listing for the position in Miami, FL.

Updates on 1/9/16: The position in Jersey City, NJ has been filled or is no longer available.

Updates on 1/9/16: Added a listing for the position in Miami, FL.

Updates on 2/6/16, 2/16/16, 3/6/16: Marked out a listing for the position in Bangalore, India.

Good luck with your job hunting,
James T. Savidge

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Application Developer, Glasgow, U.K.

The job listing I posted on November 25th has expired but another listing of what looks like the same role has appeared:  a Smalltalk Developer is wanted by the Kapital project’s Glasgow team.  Kapital is a pricing engine written in VisualWorks and GemStone.  It has some 90 developers world-wide, organised in teams at 4 or 5 locations.

Although Smalltalk experience is preferred, a developer who has gained Object-Oriented experience in Python, C#, Java or similar will be eligible.  The role is development, but includes participation in a production support rota.

Smalltalk Jobs – 12/13/15

Two Pharo jobs, both in Lille France, both for one year:

Engineer Position 1 year + 1 year
==================================

INRIA RMoD and the Pharo Consortium are looking for a full-time engineer for helping with developing
Pharo and the infrastructure around it.

The focus of this job is the infrastructure that Pharo provides to external projects as well as the
infrastructure we use to develop Pharo itself.

– Infrastructure for external projects
Pharo is used in many contexts: an ever growing number of frameworks are contributed by the community. Pharo already
provides CI infrastructure, but what is missing is the automatic check of collections of frameworks and libraries.
We want to provides validated “distributions” focussing on certain tasks, for example Pharo for Web development.

– Pharo and Git
Pharo has some support for using Git. The goal is to improve the support of git and other versioning systems.

– Pharo itself
The engineer is expected to be actively involved in helping to improve the infrastructure that the Pharo community uses
(CI server for continues integration, interplay with issue tracking) and to actively help with day-to-day bug fixing.

We are looking for a candidate with prior experience with Pharo and possibly some background in continuous integration:

– Knowledge in Dynamic Languages
– Continuous integration and deployment
– English

Work in a research lab, but no paper writing, no teaching, no administration. In addition:

– Centrally located (one hour from Paris, 1h20 from London, 35 min from Brussels)
– Try a lot of good beer (our office is just 10km from the border to Belgium)
– Program with Pharo all day!

Lille is an active city but not expensive (lot of students…), centrally located with good connections
by train to everywhere (including CDG and Brussels airports).

Duration: 12 + 12 months
Starting date: Feb or March 2016
Salary: 2600-3200 euros brut / month, depending on experience
Location: Lille (no remote job possible)

More about
Pharo: http://www.pharo.org
INRIA RMOD: http://rmod.lille.inria.fr
INRIA Lille: http://www.inria.fr/lille/
INRIA in General: http://www.inria.fr
Lille: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lille
http://wikitravel.org/en/Lille

Do not hesitate to contact us for more information.

Engineer Position 1 Year
===================

INRIA RMoD and the Pharo Consortium are looking for a full-time engineer for helping with developing Pharo.

The focus of this job is “Pharo on embedded and mobile devices for the internet of things”.

– Embedded Pharo on ARM
The currently available class of ARM devices (BeagleBone, Raspberry PI) are a very interesting platform for Pharo.
The engineer should strengthen the existing efforts to get Pharo working on these platforms.

– Pharo on Android
Improve the support of Android devices. With Pharo6, we will migrate to a complete new design and implementation of
UI, Windowing and graphics. The engineer will work on making these features available on Android devices.

– Pharo itself
The engineer is expected to be actively involved in helping to improve the infrastructure that the Pharo community used
(CI server for continues integration, interplay with issue tracking) and to actively help with day-to-day bug fixing.

We are looking for a candidate with some prior experience with Pharo

– Knowledge in Dynamic Languages
– Experience with mobile development is a plus
– English

Work in a research lab, but no paper writing, no teaching, no administration. In addition:

– centrally located (one hour from Paris, 1h20 from London, 35 min from Brussels)
– try a lot of good beer (our office is just 10km from the border to Belgium)
– Program with Pharo all day!

Lille is an active city but not expensive (lot of students…), centrally located with good connections
by train to everywhere (including CDG and Brussels airports).

Duration: 12 month
Starting date: as soon as possible (Spring 2016)
Salary: 2600-3200 euros brut / month, depending on experience
Location: Lille (no remote job possible)

More about
Pharo: http://www.pharo.org
INRIA RMOD: http://rmod.lille.inria.fr
INRIA Lille: http://www.inria.fr/lille/
INRIA in General: http://www.inria.fr
Lille: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lille
http://wikitravel.org/en/Lille

Do not hesitate to contact us for more information.

Smalltalk Jobs -12/11/15

  • Bryan, TXAutomation Engineer at Advantage Resourcing
    • Required Skills:
      • You hold a degree in Computer Science / Information Technology / Software Engineering.
      • High-tech manufacturing
      • Familiarity with SAP ERP APC and SPC in industrial manufacturing.
      • An understanding of quality metrics used in a manufacturing flow.
      • C/C++
      • Java
      • Smalltalk
      • Delphi
      • Relational database design
      • SQL
      • Version control
      • Automated software production and test systems
      • JEE
      • Microsoft.NET
      • Possess strong analytical, communication and interpersonal skills and are able to work independently.
      • Willing to occasionally [TL3] travel domestic and international.
  • Bangalore, India – SmallTalk Developer 3 – Associate (Job ID 150113015) through J.P. Morgan
    • Required Skills:
      • The candidate should have an understanding of an object oriented programming language (e.g. Java, C++, C#, Python, Ruby, Smalltalk) and their underlying principles
      • Data modelling
      • Code version control
      • Understanding of performant coding and optimisations
      • Enthusiasm for increasing knowledge of financial markets and products is essential
      • Willingness to adopt an agile development process
    • Additional listings: J.P. Morgan

Updates on 1/9/16: The position in Bangalore, India has been filled or is no longer available.

Good luck with your job hunting,
James T. Savidge

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Smalltalk Jobs – 12/5/15

  • Addison, TX – Senior Java Software Engineer (Smalltalk) through Trintech
    • Required Skills:
      • BS in Computer Science
      • Strong knowledge of Smalltalk
      • Strong knowledge of OO concepts and design patterns
      • Strong knowledge of Client-Server applications
      • Working knowledge of database design and SQL
      • Effective verbal and written communication skills
      • Willingness to learn new technologies
      • Working knowledge of VisualAge or VisualWorks
      • Working knowledge of build management
    • Wanted Skills:
      • Java
  • Capital Federal, Argentina – Smalltalk Developer (for Kapital project) through Randstad
    • Required Skills:
      • Knowledge in Smalltalk
      • Mathematical Background
      • Flexibility to learn
      • Excellent interpersonal skills, team player
    • Wanted Skills:
      • Degree in computer science
      • An interest in financial derivatives products

Updates on 10/2/16: The position in Capital Federal, Argentina has been filled or is no longer available.

Updates on 12/16/19: The position in Addison, TX has been filled or is no longer available.

Good luck with your job hunting,
James T. Savidge

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