Stability of Squeak

Andrew C. Greenberg werdna at mucow.com
Tue Aug 14 12:17:55 UTC 2001


On Tuesday, August 14, 2001, at 07:31 AM, robin wrote:

> In my commercial work, I'm used to the idea that even code which has 
> been
> thoroughly tested, with a seemingly comprehensive set of test cases by 
> the
> developers (exaustive/exhausting testing), will often fall apart under
> seemingly obvious condition when real users first use it.  With squeak, 
> it
> seems that the idea is that everyone is developer - the only people who 
> are
> 'just users' are newbies.

Squeak is hardly seeing its "first users" now.  I, too, was a newbie at 
one time who experienced no ill performance during my initiation.  My 
wife and children have been using Squeak without any catastrophic 
failure as well.  My colleagues at the firm who use my Squeak-based 
patent writing tools have never reported a crash.  Sheila's students at 
Terrace Elementary School have likewise managed not to crash the VM.  A 
software-development client of mine adopted Squeak for rapid prototyping 
and they, too, haven't had reported to me any disasters (although I 
haven't really asked them -- I'll check up on this).  Are they all 
developers as well?

For me, at least, Squeak has been solid as a rock -- among the most 
stable development platforms on which I have worked.  Frankly, the 
instability you are reporting is foreign to me -- I simply never 
experienced it, and neither have the people (professionals, newbies, 
adults and kids) here who are working on Squeak.

> I'm also aware that without enough information to reproduce a bug, in 
> 99% of
> cases there's little that can be done - from a scientific perspective it
> might even be said not to exist.  In future, I'll make sure to include 
> it.

We still don't even know your configuration or system version, let alone 
the symptoms you have identified as a crash.  The advice may be as 
simple as your having a bad build, or using test pilot software when you 
shouldn't -- or you may be perceiving crashes that aren't.




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