Fellow Squeakers,

We are all suffering from holiday tension and tempers are running a little
short.  Yes things are a bit chaotic and some of us want to exercise a
little more discipline in our code and mail writing.

So, let’s sit back, relax, and look at what we are doing right for a
change:

We have a very good multi-platform tool for expressing ideas.

I think it runs pretty well considering what it is trying to do.  We are
supporting a multi-threaded virtualized operating system with real
windowing that is pure OO to its very core.  Most of the VM is written in
Squeak and mere mortals like me can look at it and learn from it.

We have access to more machine/net features than any other system I know of
without having to spend our lives trying to see the purple stripe on the
orange electron next to the green proton by the yellow neutron.

We have a community of people who do share what they have.  We have parts
that fit together pretty well with the occasional bit of sanding.

I may actually fit somewhere in that “mass market” of developers / “users”
who work with Squeak as a tool  I like the freedom to nip here and tuck
there so that it does what I want.

Squeak has multimedia features that are light years ahead of some rather
expensive media tools by various vendors.  Where else can you do a family
tree with pictures and relationships you can move around?  Oh by the way,
it’s great to be able to experiment with photo processing to enhance
various features without a massive compiler and more manuals on file
formats than I care to count.  The stream and canvas support are almost
magical.

Where else (beside Smalltalk) can you wreck in the middle of something, fix
it, and then continue where you left off?  I actually saw a demonstration
crash, get fixed, and continue in front of a high level customer.  The
customer thought the crash was part of the demo and added funding to the
project because they liked that “feature”.

We have SqueakMap and we have Montecello.  They can even cooperate with
each other to give us near Envy power.  Yes, they are evolving and we have
experienced the occasional oopsy.  You know what.  They’re getting better.
Everyone involved from the Guides on down deserves the communities
gratitude for their flagrant acts of community service.

We have a community that is open and usually friendly.  We band together
and help one another achieve things that the gray suits cannot imagine.
Where else can the “blue plane” and “pink plane” coexist without causing
warfare like the infighting that nearly destroyed Apple?

I for one owe the community so much for allowing me to work with world
class tools and people.  I will be getting my better toys together to
contribute to the community. Where are those SqueakMap submission
instructions again?

Happy holidays and here’s to an ever improving Squeak!
Tap