[Newbies] What happened to all the toys?

Chris Muller asqueaker at gmail.com
Thu Oct 15 01:48:15 UTC 2015


>
> Squeak has few resources nowadays and nobody (including me) has continued
> to work on these things.
>

(sigh) Forgive me for feeling the need to set the record straight.  I think
your phrase, "few resources nowadays" implies that Squeak is barely on
life-support when, in fact, we just put out best release at least since 3.8
thanks to the hundreds of hours poured in by volunteers from all over.

I'm not sure what work needs to be done on these things, but they're still
there and available in Squeak 5.0 right now.  I just loaded up Chess
straight into 5.0 from SqueakMap.  It was flawless.


> For me the big breakdown was that project save broke in 4.5.
>

That was due to the premature introduction of Environments.  I wish I had
time to try to figure it out because this is clearly affecting Squeak's
users..  :-(   Is anyone using Environments who might know enough how to
fix that bug?

In any case, you can save Projects with the Ma Serializer package.


>
> The big plus of Squeak for me is it's backwards compatibility. So I
> develop in 4.4 and if I need the speed of the new VM I just deploy it on
> 5.0. This is for example all my Raspberry Pi work.
>

Why not develop in 5.0?  Because of the project save bug?


> I did a lot of work in 3.8 which afaik has all the toys you mention and
> some development tools I like.
>

PianoMorph and WaveEditorMorph, are right there in the 5.0 image.  Chess is
on SqueakMap, it works.  There are multiple FreeCell games on SqueakMap as
well as a "Games" package.  I would recommend at least _trying_ to load
them before reverting to any old image.


> Basically with todays computers it runs fast as lightning compared to
> then. You'll need to find the latest interpreter (non cog, non spur) VM,
>

The latest interpreter VM has problems and is not maintained.  Its use is
not recommended.

By contrast, the VM's for 4.6 and 5.0 ARE actively maintained today.
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