Hi, Stephen!

The pink plane / blue plane tension is certainly a critical force.  My
concern is that the desire to move Squeak out onto the pink (let's say
"practical") plane must not pull it away from the intersection with the
orthogonally oriented blue ("bold?"  :-) plane.   Squeak (IMO) should not
try to compete with or try to become like other versions of Smalltalk, but
should instead continue to do what Smalltalk did twenty or thirty years ago
by 'competing with' (defining) the future and being what others want to
emulate.  I keep thinking of the story of the Jobs demo at PARC, which led
to a whole industry trying with all their might to build systems which
simply *looked like* what "proto-Squeak" ST-72 could actually do.

To address your metaphor, the engines must not fail; but every successful
Moon-shot to date has required that some of the engines must fall off once
their purpose has been achieved.

All the best,

Gary


----- Original Message ----- 
From: Stephen Pair
To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2003 9:13 AM
Subject: Re: What we want with Squeak?


Gary Fisher wrote:

> Hi, Diego!
>
> Your assessment sounds about right and implies (at least to me) a
> subsequent question: is Squeak to remain the vanguard in the journey
> from 3 + 4 to *real* personal computing -- "Media (and much more)
> Squeak" -- or is it to be sidetracked at some intermediate point like
> all the other descendants of ST-72?  Simply put, is Squeak being built
> for tomorrow or for today?
>
> Gary Fisher


I think this dichotomy of the traditional squeaker vs. the media
squeaker is not valid at all...and neither is the question you pose.
Most of the "traditional" squeakers want Squeak to be a great media
environment as well...but, I think many have come to the conclusion that
you can't shoot the moon if your engines fail half way there.

The point is, Squeak does need lot's of attention in the blue plane if
it is to make progress in the pink (or did I get those colors backwards
again).  ;)

As for being "sidetracked"...I don't think that's possible...Squeak is
nothing without the people that are driving it, and only they can have
goals that can be sidetracked.  There are lot's of people making
progress with Squeak in lot's of directions, and that should continue.

- Stephen