Stefs roadmap for 3.9, time to get it nailed down
Cees de Groot
cg at cdegroot.com
Wed Feb 23 22:20:34 UTC 2005
On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 21:44:24 +0100, stéphane ducasse
<ducasse at iam.unibe.ch> wrote:
> Martin was not asking for information, he was saying that basically we
> are researchers and that what we are proposing
> is idiot or has no value and I do not want to argue with people at this
> level. Sorry!
>
I hear that a lot of you. Martin was just lining out a very sound set of
rules *iff* you work under the assumption that Smalltalk/Squeak needs to
be as stable as possible. I have never read that he found Traits idiotic,
at best he finds them unnecessary and if I recall he was fishing for
evidence to the contrary.
> You mix everything.
No, I don't. I just emulate Joe Average who loads up SqueakMap, sees
Traits, thinks "hey that's this cool stuff from the Berne guys", but finds
this comment.
> We always said that we would commit to produce high quality code and
> environment and if this would not be ready we will not push it. Should
> I re-say again and again and again.
No, you need to say it only once. In the SqueakMap comments, for starters,
where chances are higher that people will read it than in any posting on
the mailing list.
> So you can see that my proposal for 3.9 is quite coherent.
>
Maybe from your point of view. But can't you understand that outsiders,
who haven't got access to full Traits with a souped up OmniBrowser
etcetera, nor to the original prototype, are quite skeptical? They have to
put a lot of trust in you guys for what amounts to be the first major
language chance in quite some time.
And don't understand me wrong - I like Traits. I want it to become usable
for everyone, because I think it does solve some genuine problems. I'm
just playing the devil's advocate here, attempting to clarify more
skeptical viewpoints on Traits.
But - please let's drop this metadiscussion. It eats too much energy and
distracts from the stuff that is really important. If you feel like
answering my statements above, feel free to do so; I'll however will
probably not respond anymore, because this is more important:
> Adrian posted call for feedback long time ago.
I'm beginning to get the feeling that general calls for feedback don't
work in this community ;)
So one issue to solve is how to get more people looking at Traits, and
hopefully working towards a releasable level.
> Adrian interfaced it with Monticello and the new version of OB
> because the class browser code is so bad.
>
The drawback is that this ties Traits' release schedule to OB's release
schedule, not?
> He boostrapped the kernel but each time a new release of squeak is
> coming and something change then he has to check again if the changes we
> had to do on the kernel have to be redone.
>
That's of course a problem that will persist as long as Traits ain't "out
there".
> We proposed to give a real definition to canUnderstand in presence of
> abstract method but people having nothing
> to do with squeak started to shout.
>
Hmm... probably missed that one - do you have a pointer or at least
approximate time period about this discussion?
> Apparently alan is found of traits so there is some hope.
>
Heh. Well, Alan is fond of Croquet as well, I assume, but that isn't going
to make it land into 3.9 base ;)
Concluding, Stephane - I'm committed to getting Traits into 3.9, 4.0, or
whatever. But not by forcing it through everyone's throat. There must be
some time to be able to play with the stuff, some time to build up a real
world code base with Traits, to have people look at kernel refactorings
with Traits, etcetera. All the other good tools that are in the base image
have had to go through the same testing and acceptance process: SqueakMap,
Monticello, all were available and in use before they were made part of
the base image. Traits *must* go through the same process, it's to big to
just shove it in. So it's vital to get a production-level version out
there ASAP so people can work with it. That's usually the best way to let
people make up their minds.
More information about the Squeak-dev
mailing list
|