Smalltalk & Squeak featured on Slashdot

Tom tmb at lumo.com
Fri Apr 20 04:52:34 UTC 2001


On Thu, Apr 19, 2001 at 09:42:07AM -0400, Bijan Parsia wrote:
> Anyhoo, none of our flapping gums is going to do much, since all these
> lines are well known. Code is prolly more convincing.

I'm sorry, but that wasn't at all my point.  This isn't about code,
it's about keeping an open mind.  Without an open mind, no amount of
code contributions is going to help.

Your impression of Emacs as "slow, annoying, clunky" is just the
same as that student's first impression of Squeak.  And both those
first impressions are justifiable, in my opinion.  But I have never
encountered a system that has been around for a few decades and doesn't
have some really nifty functionality under the covers.  If you aren't
willing to get beyond the "slow, annoying, clunky" view of a successful
system, you can't learn why it is successful in the first place.  

How much of that you then translate into your preferred system is
an entirely separate question.

> Yes, and this is the big problem: what's in Emacs that is *part* of the
> success that is *nevertheless* translatable to the Squeak context *in such
> a way* to promote Squeak's "success".

I think that's a separate question.  My personal opinion is that an
advanced IDE should have automatic window management and it should have a
very rich set of key bindings.  But other's preferences may differ;
not all people are alike.

But to attract new users, I think the main issues are the ability to
customize the system to reduce cognitive load, the ability to solve
real-world problems easily out of the box, and quick, unobtrusive obvious
paths for access to relevant help and documentation.   Emacs hardly shines
in these areas.  Squeak actually has a much better chance, since most
of the bits and pieces already exist (key bindings, customizable LAF,
OS interfaces, GUI widgets, help system); with Squeak, it's less about
programming and more about packaging.

Cheers,
Thomas.





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