Working Together (was: re: newbie question (...)) [LONG]

squeaker squeaker at dangerous-minds.com
Wed Jul 14 08:32:37 UTC 1999


Andreas Raab wrote:
> And, since I don't have the time to fix or clean up 
> the existing stuff the only thing I can do (and 
> have done) is sending messages to those folks working 
> on it.

Caveat 1: I am a Squeak newbie.
Caveat 2: I am new to this list.

No disrespect intended, I think you got to the heart of the problem, here:
no time.  

The energy currently pouring into Squeak is awesome!  The committment and
contributions of the Disney Squeak Core members is incredible!  Please
allow me to express my personal gratitude for the wonderful job you all
have done.  I am amazed and delighted to have Squeak available to me --
particularly at the price!  All of this energy fritzing around needs some
channeling or something's going to get zapped, fried, zocked.

Unfortunately, if Squeak follows a common Free-Software/OpenSource pattern,
release management is going to get *much*, *much* more difficult.  That's
the good news?  Yes, when the alternative is to have Smalltalk go to sleep
for another twenty years.

The "no time" syndrome is an inherent problem for almost any centralized
control system where a small, finite nucleus faces exponential workload
growth in the presence of competing survival priorities.  This kind of
stuff was fully covered long ago in D'Arcy Thompson's _Laws of Growth and
Form_.  Give youselves a break!  You're facing an inevitable and nearly
insurmountable set of constraints, here.  Nature's usual answer?  A phase
transition.  

Two other language projects that seem to have done reasonably well with
this process are Perl and Python.  They've been ground through the same
mill, though.  Both have gone through a period of "competing distros"; both
have faced a lot of co-developer pressure towards unregulated growth; both
have resisted this pressure and have managed to maintain some integrity
control over the base product; both have large, growing extension
collections and libraries full of add-ons.  You are not alone.

We at the periphery, who hope to contribute to Squeak, are lucky to have
you at the center -- people who really care about the stability of Squeak
and who have the wisdom and experience to curb our wild passions in
deference to the needs of ... gasp ... users (see Tron).  You at the
center, who hope to make Squeak great, are lucky to have us at the
periphery -- energetic people with ideas ... some even workable ... and the
will to code (even if our efforts flail against the standard of
perfection).  

The phase transition?  Probably a common computing solution: the move from
THE MAINFRAME to distributed systems.  Think of this as a distributed
objects problem.  Find a Smalltalk solution!

Finally, let me simplay state that I am proud to have become a member of
the Squeak community.

Blessings to all!


John Tobler
squeaker at dangerous-minds.com
Squeak?  See http://www.squeak.org/


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