Apologies if this has been said before; I haven't read all of the comments. Still, this bears repeating. Squeak is a software development system. EToys is an application that uses Squeak.
As such when EToys finds that a Squeak method doesn't do what EToys needs then EToys should create a subclass of the class containing the method and create its version of the method in the subclass. I have had to do this many times.
I realize this approach can sometimes be complicated because wherever the subclass is to be created is a method that must also be modified. This implyies that a new subclass of the class containing the subclass creating method must also be created. This can be a real nightmare and I expect would be so for EToys. But EToys gains the advantage of not needing a fork of Squeak to proceed and Squeak gains the advantage of not using EToys code Remember that Pharo was created in part because its supporters didn't believe EToys should be part of Squeak.
This is how OO software applications should be developed and I don't understand why ETorys was instead developed the way it was.
If it is a performance issue then replacing a method directly, as done in EToys, should only be done where the need for the performance gain is demonstrated.
On Wed, 30 Aug 2023 at 01:39, squeak-dev-request@lists.squeakfoundation.org wrote:
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Today's Topics:
- Re: Let's discuss the future of Etoys in Squeak 6.1 (and beyond) (David T. Lewis)
- Re: Let's discuss the future of Etoys in Squeak 6.1 (and beyond) (Marcel Taeumel)
- Re: Let's discuss the future of Etoys in Squeak 6.1 (and beyond) (Marcel Taeumel)
- Re: Let's discuss the future of Etoys in Squeak 6.1 (and beyond) (Marcel Taeumel)
Message: 1 Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2023 22:52:34 -0400 From: "David T. Lewis" lewis@mail.msen.com Subject: [squeak-dev] Re: Let's discuss the future of Etoys in Squeak 6.1 (and beyond) To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Message-ID: 20230830025234.GB41726@shell.msen.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
On Tue, Aug 29, 2023 at 09:18:10PM -0400, Jim Rosenberg wrote:
So...should we remove Etoys from Trunk at this point?
***WHY***?????????
The rationale is simplicity and comprehension, primarily from the point of view of readers of the code in the Squeak image.
I am not advocating anything here WRT Etoys, but I would say that the Squeak image needs to be as simple, readable, and understandable as possible. Etoys is a wonderful thing but it can add quite a bit of cognitive clutter, and that is why the Etoys removal question is important.
You ***DON'T CARE*** about preserving eToys content.
I think that Marcel has introduced this discussion thread because he *does* care. I care about it too, and so do most of the other people who are going to reply to this thread :-)
I don't personally use eToys, but I care very much about Squeak as a content-development platform.
I agree :-)
This kind of speculation I find profoundly alarming.
But no I'm not alarmed. Preserving content (not "code" but real content) is important. It is also a hard problem, so I'm not alarmed to have that sort of discussion.
Dave
Message: 2 Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2023 09:25:26 +0200 From: Marcel Taeumel marcel.taeumel@hpi.de Subject: [squeak-dev] Re: Let's discuss the future of Etoys in Squeak 6.1 (and beyond) To: gettimothy via Squeak-dev squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Message-ID: Mailbird-1b7d3755-0e8f-4f41-a6cf-5d400460a168@hpi.de Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_59183877.409056177443"
Hi Jim --
I don't personally use eToys, but I care very much about Squeak as a content-development platform.
Same here. As you can see through the change-set I provided, Etoys in its current form implies high maintenance effort. It's modularity is poor, having Etoys-specific statements all over the place.
This kind of speculation I find profoundly alarming.
Not sure what you mean by that. We care very much about robustness and backwards compatibility. Etoys in its current form makes it very hard to maintain relevant modules such as ImageSegment and DataStream.
Best, Marcel Am 30.08.2023 03:18:32 schrieb Jim Rosenberg jr@amanue.com:
So...should we remove Etoys from Trunk at this point?
***WHY***?????????
You ***DON'T CARE*** about preserving eToys content.
I don't personally use eToys, but I care very much about Squeak as a content-development platform. This kind of speculation I find profoundly alarming.
On Tue, 29 Aug 2023 15:47:19 +0200 Marcel Taeumel via Squeak-dev wrote:
Hi all --
Please find attached a change-set that unloads Etoys from Squeak 6.1alpha #22748 (and later).
Let us use this artifact to discuss the future of Etoys in Squeak 6.1 and beyond. You can use Monticello or the ChangeSorter to take a look at what's needed besides unloading the Etoys package itself. Also check preamble and postscript of the attached change-set.
!!! Yes, simply re-loading the Etoys package is not enough to restore basic Etoys functionality. There are several sub-method changes needed for the Etoys integration into the base system.
Here is what would still work through the package MorphicExtras:
- Games
- Sketches and PaintBox
- Flaps
- CalendarMorph
- SpectrumAnalyzerMorph
Here is what would still "work" through the package System:
- Object storage (ImageSegment etc.)
- ProjectLoading
Here is what would still work through the package Protocols:
- Lexicon tool
- Vocabulary framework
Here is what would be gone:
- Tiles, viewers, and scripts
- Players and costumes
- Pen trails, Turtles, ...
- References, CustomEventsRegistry, ScriptingSystem
- Siblings for (Player-only) uni-classes
- DeepCopier support for (Player-only) uni-classes
- Preferences #noviceMode, #eToyFriendly, and more
Note that we still have several Etoys-compatible releases such as Etoys 4/5/6 and Squeak 5.1/5.2/5.3/6.0. Best compatibility is probably with Etoys 5. Most updated base system is probably Squeak 6.0. :-)
So...should we remove Etoys from Trunk at this point?
Please share your thoughts. And feel free to also report issues with loading/using the attached change-set itself.
Best, Marcel
Ralph Boland wrote on Wed, 30 Aug 2023 08:57:37 -0600
Apologies if this has been said before; I haven't read all of the comments. Still, this bears repeating. Squeak is a software development system. EToys is an application that uses Squeak.
This is the current end goal, but does not reflect the history.
Alan Kay's group at Apple wanted to build Etoys as a successor to Vivarium. One requirement was that it had to run on any computers a school might have. The obvious choice at the time was to build it on top of Java, but in the 1995/1996 timeframe that emerging software ecosystem was not really up to the task.
The group was dismayed that the "state of the art" was so primitive compared to their own mid 1980s Apple Smalltalk. It seemed a better use of their time to use that as the starting point instead and clean it up to be usable in the mid 1990s (go from 16 to 32 bits, add networking, add color and sound).
So the project had a major detour that got us the nice Squeak (and eventually Cuis and Pharo) we have today, but when they went back to working on Etoys itself there was no effort to structure it as an application.
When the technology was ready, deployment turned out to be the problem. Except for rare schools working with Alan's group (who had moved from Apple to Disney and his own VPRI) and a few independent efforts, most schools had a limited list of what they allowed on their computers and Squeak+Etoys wasn't on it.
Schools were allowing web browser plugins such as Java and Flash, so a new effort was made to deploy Squeak as such a plugin. Unfortunately it turned out that schools also had a limited list of allowed plugins and this turned out to be a dead end.
The last gasp was the One Laptop Per Child project, which required the re-licensing of Squeak to make the open source purists participating in that project happy. The teacher's attention was on Scratch, Etoy's younger sibling. But in many schools the students themselves found Etoys by just poking around and did interesting things with it, though probably not as much as they might have with some actual help.
Since then the Etoys creators have moved on to other things and it hasn't been touched other than a few personal and heroic efforts.
-- Jecel
p.s.: I do mostly use older images for my work, including the little bit of Etoys I use. Having just checked, the lastest image I used Etoys in was 6.0alpha
I have used Etoys quite a lot. I have also contributed fixes and enhancements to Etoys through the years. I find Etoys quite nice for smaller ideas and projects. It is very versatile and powerful. An example in attachment.
Its drawbacks is that it doesn't scale very well; more than 5 players and 10 scripts gets quite hard to manage. And it has almost exponential growth in complexity. It is also an instance based system that makes it immediate and lively, but also fragile. If you move players, start scripts wrong or delete something, it falls apart and it is hard to fix.
Best, Karl
On Wed, Aug 30, 2023 at 8:14 PM Jecel Assumpcao Jr jecel@merlintec.com wrote:
Ralph Boland wrote on Wed, 30 Aug 2023 08:57:37 -0600
Apologies if this has been said before; I haven't read all of the
comments.
Still, this bears repeating. Squeak is a software development system. EToys is an application that uses Squeak.
This is the current end goal, but does not reflect the history.
Alan Kay's group at Apple wanted to build Etoys as a successor to Vivarium. One requirement was that it had to run on any computers a school might have. The obvious choice at the time was to build it on top of Java, but in the 1995/1996 timeframe that emerging software ecosystem was not really up to the task.
The group was dismayed that the "state of the art" was so primitive compared to their own mid 1980s Apple Smalltalk. It seemed a better use of their time to use that as the starting point instead and clean it up to be usable in the mid 1990s (go from 16 to 32 bits, add networking, add color and sound).
So the project had a major detour that got us the nice Squeak (and eventually Cuis and Pharo) we have today, but when they went back to working on Etoys itself there was no effort to structure it as an application.
When the technology was ready, deployment turned out to be the problem. Except for rare schools working with Alan's group (who had moved from Apple to Disney and his own VPRI) and a few independent efforts, most schools had a limited list of what they allowed on their computers and Squeak+Etoys wasn't on it.
Schools were allowing web browser plugins such as Java and Flash, so a new effort was made to deploy Squeak as such a plugin. Unfortunately it turned out that schools also had a limited list of allowed plugins and this turned out to be a dead end.
The last gasp was the One Laptop Per Child project, which required the re-licensing of Squeak to make the open source purists participating in that project happy. The teacher's attention was on Scratch, Etoy's younger sibling. But in many schools the students themselves found Etoys by just poking around and did interesting things with it, though probably not as much as they might have with some actual help.
Since then the Etoys creators have moved on to other things and it hasn't been touched other than a few personal and heroic efforts.
-- Jecel
p.s.: I do mostly use older images for my work, including the little bit of Etoys I use. Having just checked, the lastest image I used Etoys in was 6.0alpha
Nice. Your attached project gives an error in 6.0 but can be dropped directly into https://squeak.js.org/etoys/#fullscreen or also via this link:
https://squeak.js.org/etoys/#fullscreen&document=https://lists.squeakfou...
(if that's too long try https://tinyurl.com/m77dmf2z )
Vanessa
On Wed, Aug 30, 2023 at 11:57 AM karl ramberg karlramberg@gmail.com wrote:
I have used Etoys quite a lot. I have also contributed fixes and enhancements to Etoys through the years. I find Etoys quite nice for smaller ideas and projects. It is very versatile and powerful. An example in attachment.
Its drawbacks is that it doesn't scale very well; more than 5 players and 10 scripts gets quite hard to manage. And it has almost exponential growth in complexity. It is also an instance based system that makes it immediate and lively, but also fragile. If you move players, start scripts wrong or delete something, it falls apart and it is hard to fix.
Best, Karl
On Wed, Aug 30, 2023 at 8:14 PM Jecel Assumpcao Jr jecel@merlintec.com wrote:
Ralph Boland wrote on Wed, 30 Aug 2023 08:57:37 -0600
Apologies if this has been said before; I haven't read all of the
comments.
Still, this bears repeating. Squeak is a software development system. EToys is an application that uses Squeak.
This is the current end goal, but does not reflect the history.
Alan Kay's group at Apple wanted to build Etoys as a successor to Vivarium. One requirement was that it had to run on any computers a school might have. The obvious choice at the time was to build it on top of Java, but in the 1995/1996 timeframe that emerging software ecosystem was not really up to the task.
The group was dismayed that the "state of the art" was so primitive compared to their own mid 1980s Apple Smalltalk. It seemed a better use of their time to use that as the starting point instead and clean it up to be usable in the mid 1990s (go from 16 to 32 bits, add networking, add color and sound).
So the project had a major detour that got us the nice Squeak (and eventually Cuis and Pharo) we have today, but when they went back to working on Etoys itself there was no effort to structure it as an application.
When the technology was ready, deployment turned out to be the problem. Except for rare schools working with Alan's group (who had moved from Apple to Disney and his own VPRI) and a few independent efforts, most schools had a limited list of what they allowed on their computers and Squeak+Etoys wasn't on it.
Schools were allowing web browser plugins such as Java and Flash, so a new effort was made to deploy Squeak as such a plugin. Unfortunately it turned out that schools also had a limited list of allowed plugins and this turned out to be a dead end.
The last gasp was the One Laptop Per Child project, which required the re-licensing of Squeak to make the open source purists participating in that project happy. The teacher's attention was on Scratch, Etoy's younger sibling. But in many schools the students themselves found Etoys by just poking around and did interesting things with it, though probably not as much as they might have with some actual help.
Since then the Etoys creators have moved on to other things and it hasn't been touched other than a few personal and heroic efforts.
-- Jecel
p.s.: I do mostly use older images for my work, including the little bit of Etoys I use. Having just checked, the lastest image I used Etoys in was 6.0alpha
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