Stability of Squeak

Alan Kay Alan.Kay at squeakland.org
Tue Aug 14 15:58:25 UTC 2001


Robin --

FWIW, I think your questions were quite to the point. I think Andrew 
is mainly frustrated because he likes to find and fix bugs and I 
sense he was willing to try to find them if you had given him more 
info.

I have two characterizations about the system right now after having 
used it since we started building it. The most important one is that 
bugs (even deep ones) have been pretty easy to find and fix. And, 
since the VM process is mostly machine generated from the VM 
simulator, most VM bugs have been exactly the same on all platforms. 
This has helped alot. However, there are quite a few more "soft bugs" 
(those that bring up a notify window but can usually just be ignored) 
than one would like even in an experimental system.
      The other characterization I have is that there is just a lot of 
important stuff that is working very solidly under extreme 
conditions. I make up and give most of the "Squeak Central" demos and 
I always try to make what we show be beyond the general state of 
things today. So, while we are not interested in competing with Java 
or the WWW (or MS), it's important for me so show a lot of stuff that 
"programmers of the orthodox world" think is really difficult (or 
even intractable), especially with the small amount of code we use. I 
have had a very good experience over the years in generating 
interesting but quickly fixable bugs via this process. This bodes 
well for more stable releases to come.

Cheers,

Alan

At 3:02 PM +0100 8/14/01, robin wrote:
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Andrew C. Greenberg" <werdna at mucow.com>
>To: <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
>Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2001 1:17 PM
>Subject: Re: Stability of Squeak
>
>
>>  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
>
>I didn't say "first users" so I assume you're not quoting me there.  After
>any piece of software has been changed, there is the possibility that new
>bugs are introduced, or old ones revealed.  I understood squeak to be a
>software system which is constantly under development.
>
>>  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?
>>
>
>My understanding (again I could be wrong) was that part of the philosophy of
>Squeak, and the earlier Smalltalk 80 systems was that anyone could change
>them for their own creative purposes, and that the simplicity of the system
>was intended to foster this.  I was alluding to this when I said 'everyone
>is a developer'.  I do recognize that this doesn't stop people from using it
>without ever trying to program it. Perhaps I was too literal in my
>expression.
>
>>  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 very glad to hear it.  My main reason for asking about this was to get
>an idea of what other people's experiences were.
>
>>  > 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.
>
>That's not true, although admittedly I didn't give the most detailed bug
>report possible.
>
>I DID include the date and version number of the squeak build, the platform
>(windows - I didn't say which though), what I did to cause the 'crashes',
>how the squeak behaved after the crashes, and the squeak process' behaviour
>in terms of CPU and virtual memory.  I also put forward some of my own
>speculation about what I might have done to cause them.
>
>In both cases, the behaviour fitted my definition of a crash. I didn't say
>the VM itself had crashed. Just that the squeak system had stopped
>responding.
>
>For some reason I'm perceiving your message to be somewhat defensive -
>perhaps I'm picking up the wrong tone.  My original query was to ask about
>other people's perceptions of the system - not to assert instability - I've
>only been using it for a few days.  I quite accept that the reasons (bad
>build, test pilot s/w etc.) you put forward might well be the case.  I
>thought my last message was a polite acknowledgement that I probably hadn't
>given people enough information to reproduce the problem but that I was
>quite happy with the responses I'd received.  I even said that it hasn't
>crashed since.
>
>Nevertheless, for whatever reason, I did experience what I regard as a
>couple of crashes.  If that's rare, it means the system is probably very
>stable, but I feel a little defensive as it seems to me that you are putting
>my experiences into question.
>
>I hope I'm not stupidly fanning flames here, but I feel misunderstood.
>
>-Robin


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