---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Eliot Miranda eliot.miranda@gmail.com Date: Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 3:44 PM Subject: Re: [Pharo-project] Pharo changing the game To: Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr, johnmci@smalltalkconsulting.com
On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 3:26 PM, John M McIntosh < johnmci@smalltalkconsulting.com> wrote:
Er, maybe I'll rant here since it' seems to me this the day for that. Perhaps flavoured a bit with Ralph's accidental post about cilantro.
Should we not be talking about the Smalltalk 2010 ANSI proposal? Why the lock in to the Smalltalk ANSI INCITS 319-1998 (R2002) standard?
I haven't seen much movement since Bruce kicked it off ( http://openskills.blogspot.com/2007/10/ansi-smalltalk.html). One of the hurdles was the amount of money ANSI wanted for participation in the standard. I for one couldn't afford it and couldn't see how Cadence, my then employer, would fund it. I think that goes for most of the non-vendor community. See Clay Shirky's TED presentationhttp://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_on_institutions_versus_collaboration.htmlon institutions for why IMO ANSI is a non-starter. ANSI is irrelevant; it meets it's own needs, not the needs of the Smalltalk community. It can only ever create an obsolete standard. We need to design our own standard that meets our needs. If we can design a standard that is relevant the community as a whole will increasingly adhere to it over time, and as that happens it will become more useful, and, because it is defined by us, can evolve over time, both in content and at a meta level in its standards-making processes.
I think this fits into Stephane's comment about moving forward.
IMO, moving forward means finding new forms, not putting a new badge on the same old corpse. We need a sci-fi movie not a zombie movie ;)
On 2010-02-11, at 1:51 PM, Lukas Renggli wrote:
Now why don;t people want a better smalltalk?
Sure, everybody wants a better Smalltalk.
The ANSI standard does not make scripting impossible, it does not forbid first class instance variables, it does not forbid a MOP or a module system.
The ANSI standard only talks about the basic Smalltalk syntax, Collections, Magnitudes, Streams. That's it. I don't think it is limiting in any way.
Lukas
-- Lukas Renggli http://www.lukas-renggli.ch
Pharo-project mailing list Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project
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John M. McIntosh johnmci@smalltalkconsulting.com Twitter: squeaker68882 Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd. http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com ===========================================================================
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I think part of the problem is that, even assuming we can make a new ANSI standard, making every Smalltalk ANSI-compliant will break a lot (possibly all) existing applications. This is a stiff price to pay, and a lot of homework. Perhaps it would be better to offer cross-platform libraries that provide the functionality of collections, streams and so on, but in a consistent manner. I'd hope that eventually the cross-platform libraries gain enough traction so that amending the original libraries is not as large a hurdle to jump over.
I am aware of Grease, and I think I more or less know what it does. Maybe not :). Of course, writing a new, say, collection library is not easy (or even fun), but I think it is also an opportunity to e.g.: refactor the hashed collection hierarchy into something more meaningful and useful. I have a hard time seeing how this refactoring will occur to original libraries without causing huge trauma (hence the cleanup doesn't happen).
Andres.
On 2/11/10 15:45 , Eliot Miranda wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: *Eliot Miranda* <eliot.miranda@gmail.com mailto:eliot.miranda@gmail.com> Date: Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 3:44 PM Subject: Re: [Pharo-project] Pharo changing the game To: Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr mailto:Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr, johnmci@smalltalkconsulting.com mailto:johnmci@smalltalkconsulting.com
On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 3:26 PM, John M McIntosh <johnmci@smalltalkconsulting.com mailto:johnmci@smalltalkconsulting.com> wrote:
Er, maybe I'll rant here since it' seems to me this the day for that. Perhaps flavoured a bit with Ralph's accidental post about cilantro. Should we not be talking about the Smalltalk 2010 ANSI proposal? Why the lock in to the Smalltalk ANSI INCITS 319-1998 (R2002) standard?
I haven't seen much movement since Bruce kicked it off (http://openskills.blogspot.com/2007/10/ansi-smalltalk.html). One of the hurdles was the amount of money ANSI wanted for participation in the standard. I for one couldn't afford it and couldn't see how Cadence, my then employer, would fund it. I think that goes for most of the non-vendor community. See Clay Shirky's TED presentation http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_on_institutions_versus_collaboration.html on institutions for why IMO ANSI is a non-starter. ANSI is irrelevant; it meets it's own needs, not the needs of the Smalltalk community. It can only ever create an obsolete standard. We need to design our own standard that meets our needs. If we can design a standard that is relevant the community as a whole will increasingly adhere to it over time, and as that happens it will become more useful, and, because it is defined by us, can evolve over time, both in content and at a meta level in its standards-making processes.
I think this fits into Stephane's comment about moving forward.
IMO, moving forward means finding new forms, not putting a new badge on the same old corpse. We need a sci-fi movie not a zombie movie ;)
On 2010-02-11, at 1:51 PM, Lukas Renggli wrote: >> Now why don;t people want a better smalltalk? > > Sure, everybody wants a better Smalltalk. > > The ANSI standard does not make scripting impossible, it does not > forbid first class instance variables, it does not forbid a MOP or a > module system. > > The ANSI standard only talks about the basic Smalltalk syntax, > Collections, Magnitudes, Streams. That's it. I don't think it is > limiting in any way. > > Lukas > > -- > Lukas Renggli > http://www.lukas-renggli.ch > > _______________________________________________ > Pharo-project mailing list > Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr <mailto:Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr> > http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project -- =========================================================================== John M. McIntosh <johnmci@smalltalkconsulting.com <mailto:johnmci@smalltalkconsulting.com>> Twitter: squeaker68882 Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd. http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com =========================================================================== _______________________________________________ Pharo-project mailing list Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr <mailto:Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr> http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project
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