As noted elsewhere, few others have shared your experiences.  Over 
several years of fairly brutal beating on a variety of platoforms, I 
have found it mostly bulletproof except when I was hacking the VM.  My 
powerbook behaves just fine in my hands, by the way.

A useful bit of feedback would be to identify the version, platform and 
VM number you were using.

On Monday, August 13, 2001, at 08:19 AM, Edmund Ronald wrote:

> I used to do evaluations of pprogramming language products 
> professionally,
> as a journalist. My experience with Squeak rates it a 3.5/5 in 
> stability.
>
> It will crash with good probability in a new-use situation, and be
> extremely stable in an established use pattern. This is a standard state
> of narrowly software, whose developers fix the bugs _they_ see
> immediately, but do not really get much external input on stability.
>
> There is a cheap way around this trap: Add to the README a notice 
> saying :
> If you have any difficulty in installing this software, if it crashes
> during the first uses, or if your initial expectations are not met, 
> please
> note the details of what you did and email the following adress ...
>
> Software usage is a Darwinian process: Crashes are unpleasant, so people
> tend to unconsciously work around fatal bugs, or stop using the 
> software.
> And then, because the experience was unpleasant, they forget about the
> problems they had. The day the software is *really* released, and people
> who did not WANT to use it HAVE to use it, managers suddenly see 40% of
> the new users reporting crashes and wonder why ...
>
> Oh, and by the way, I have used Squeak about 10 times, working through
> tutorials while reading the Magenta book, and had 4 crashes in that 
> number
> of sessions. What I dislike most is the crash while saving the state on
> exit, where I lose my mods (twice) . I now save my work into a file by 
> cut
> and paste. The way it turns the Powerbook in my lap into a heater (neat
> for winter). About what I expected as a new user - if I keep using it I 
> am
> sure it will "mysteriously" be totally stable later.
>
>  This is not a rant or a complaint - most good software has gone 
> throught
> this phase, just think of linux - totally stable in the hands of a pro,
> and able to make any newbie cry in frustration during his attempts at
> installing system, particularly X windows.
>
> Edmund
>
> Squeak is what a mouse does when you rub its ball the wrong way :)
>
>
>