[Newbies] Newbie assortment

[cdrick]

Hi

2008/4/8, Sven Schott <sven.schott at gmail.com>:
> Hi
>
> I've recently become a Squeak lurker (that means I've downloaded the VM,
> several books, tutorials and done some basic tests but haven't taken the
> plunge...yet). I'm a Ruby user (not programmer) and I recently was
> introduced to Squeak via Croquet (It looked interesting). I was pretty wowed
> by Squeak (can you say 'Introspective Dynamic Objects Playground'?) but
> after some research I've come up with some questions:
>
>
> 1) I have to be honest here: is it alive? I have been to the website
> (seaside and squeak both have good sites by my standards) but apart from a
> few (good) projects I'm not seeing a hell of a lot from Squeak as a whole
> (see Q.3). I'm not abandoning Ruby (I love Ruby for many reasons) but I
> intend to really get into Smalltalk. I just want to know if the ship is
> sinking (or just temporarily stalled) before I board.

projects in ST are hidden ;) squeak is more experimental than other ST
but "commercial" projects exists (Sophie, Croquet, Seaside, Plopp,
Aida, DabbleDB, Auctomatic ...)

I don't think the ship is sinking at all ;) Ruby helped ST get more
attention recently but the comunity which is small is really kind and
morevoer full of talented people (I don't count myself in ;) ).
Moreover it's not an old technology but a technology that is present
since 1980 (even more).

I might be biased but I feel 2008 will be a good year for
smalltalk/squeak/seaside/gemstone...

>
>
> 2) Can Squeak be used as the engine in enterprise with and without Seaside?
> What I mean is, can the VM run headless (is there such a status),

headless yes

> service or in some fashion that does not require an account to be logged in?
> Forgive my ignorance, but I know very little about Squeak in terms of its
> capabilities. If my question is not relevant, how then is Squeak deployed in
> enterprise environments? I guess what I'm asking is the following: I
> currently deploy IT apps using Apache(serve static content and redirect
> dynamic pages), Mongrel/Rails/Ruby (Application service)) on Linux/OS X. Can
> I do the same with Squeak/Seaside? I've seen enterprise apps with Seaside
> but they may be on other Smalltalk VM/engines.

see http://onsmalltalk.com

> 3) Is the community small? Big? Growing? Shrinking rapidly? What sites do
> people hang out at? I joined the list to see more of the community but I'd
> like to know the regular watering holes.

there is #squeak ...

>
>
> 4) Is there any push or drive to making Squeak more mainstream. Well,
> mainstream is probably the wrong word. I just think that this thing is Gold.
> Really. Seriously. When I started using Ruby I thought 'Why aren't more
> people using this?'. That happened to be just a matter of time. But Squeak
> (and indeed smalltalk) has been around for a while. Why hasn't it shot up
> like a rocket? Is it because it IS viewed as a toy? I must admit that I did

Not mainstream I guess this is not possible, but at least visible and
taken seriously. Some people try to do that... I'm thinking of Randal
Schwartz who just got a seaside presentation accepted at OSCON. I'm
sure this won't come alone :)


>
> Sven Schott
>
>
> P.S. Any Squeakers in Australia?

They should be but this is a big land;)

Cédrick