What is Squeak? (Was Re: A roadmap for 3.9)

Russell Penney russell.penney at tincanct.com
Sun Dec 12 22:48:27 UTC 2004


One more thing to add to this as a lurker and newbie is...I have been
proposing a new multimedia and file framework and the response I got was
ZERO. Not a "you are an idiot" or "you are on to something" or "great go
ahead and do it and we will help" (and I did ask for help mentors and guides
take notice), no I got nothing, zip, zero.
I wrote the OGG decoder (in pure smalltalk no less) and have had no feedback
on problems, bugs or improvements so I can only assume nobody is using it or
even looked at it (although I did get a thanks from Dan which made me feel
good :)

The biggest problem I see this for this community is that the experienced
guys slowly move away but it is very hard for a newbie to contribute
something which affects the "core" code.

Also (and maybe off the track a bit) is that there are so many additions to
base classes that have crept in over the years it is VERY hard for someone
new to Squeak or Smalltalk to figure out what methods to use.

Seeing people complain if you post something negative without a solution
here is mine:
*For 4.0 (as I think the 3.9 stuff is already here) lets start fresh. A
major release is a good time to make significant changes. And don’t rush
them.
*Propose a team whose job is being the "customer" i.e. takes responsibility
for a particular area and vetting all changes to that area (I think there
are still Guides now but I still can't figure out what they do) whether that
be by themselves or with another team that they control.
*Start with a "base" image that has enough code to start-up and load other
code. If that code is stable and has hooks to add new functionality then
everything else becomes a package. We are nearly there I think but it needs
to be separated out. Then you will know that if you call a method that is in
"base" it WILL work and it WILL do what you expect it too. Also it is a good
place to start beginners saying "these are the minimum methods for this
class, you can always expect them to be there". We are trying to plaster the
walls before fixing the foundations.

I am a bit like Stef at the moment, I love Squeak but I am seeing the
quality and functionality are going down not up, things break and are not
fixed just patched. 
People want to pull it in different directions. Fine but if we had a solid
base then they could without affecting the rest of us.

Russell

> -----Original Message-----
> From: squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:squeak-dev-
> bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org] On Behalf Of stéphane ducasse
> Sent: Monday, 13 December 2004 6:53 AM
> To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
> Subject: Re: What is Squeak? (Was Re: A roadmap for 3.9)
> 
> hi mark
> 
> Have you noticed that diego has to fork and work alone already. Don;t
> you feel that this is somehow
> our failures as a community? Especially since diego was the guy pushing
> the dynabook idea and complaining that not enough was done for the
> multimedia in squeak. Where were the people to help him?
> 
> Stef
> 





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