> Please don't read this message if you don't have time or  
> inclination for a quasi-philosophical ramble down Smalltalk Lane.  
> I'm posting this here to share some experiences I doubt are new or  
> unique but which I haven't seen discussed here in the many months  
> I've been back on the list.
>
> I have been involved in Smalltalk on and off for a good many years.  
> It keeps calling me back, like the Sirens, whenever I go in search  
> of a new tool because the one I'm engaged in at that moment falls  
> short or disappoints or just annoys me. As a result of this on- 
> again, off-again love affair with Smalltalk and Squeak, I'm far  
> from as proficient a coder or knowledgeable a designer as I would  
> certainly be by now if I'd stayed put here. But I haven't been able  
> to do that, for a host of reasons that are mostly boring and unique  
> so I won't relate them here.
>
> Today I had a conversation with a colleague and friend I had  
> referred to Squeak as a possible solution to a specific set of  
> problems he is working on for a client. He spent a full day  
> exploring Squeak and he came back with an observation that I found  
> difficult to answer. "Why," he asked me in all sincerity, "is  
> Squeak so ugly? Smalltalk has been around 30 years. It's been in  
> the hands of great design firms like Apple and Disney. It's had IBM  
> backing. Doesn't anyone in the Squeak community understand how a  
> polished, modern user interface would help to sell their  
> technology? Other than wxSqueak, which seems basically moribund [I  
> disabused him of this notion in our conversation, but that was his  
> finding on his own], there's nobody out there talking, thinking or  
> working on a professional-looking UI for Squeak's IDE or for  
> deployment of applications! What's going on there?"



> So I spent a couple of hours looking at the question he raised and  
> what I *think* I learned is that because of the way Smalltalk  
> implements graphics at some deep level beyond my ability to  
> penetrate the image, modifying its basic UI to use a more modern  
> and reactive user experience would be a major, major challenge.  
> After 30+ years, there is no way to do native UI widgets (other  
> than wxSqueak if and when it gets finalized and hopefully  
> incorporated) let alone custom widgets that look polished and  
> professional. I was able to determine that there appears to be a  
> class (PNGReadWriter) that would facilitate the import of PNG  
> images, e.g., to use as controls. With enough time and  
> understanding, I could presumably figure out how to import a  
> graphic (PNG or other) and make it behave like a button, but then  
> getting it into an app layout would require another level of  
> understanding.

Have you look at Dolphin Smalltalk

> You get the idea. (And please don't spend time telling me how to do  
> that particular task; I don't have the expertise or interest  
> anyway. It was merely an illustration of what the problem appears  
> to be.)
>
> I explained to my friend that Squeak has been used primarily for  
> research and education, not for the creation and deployment of  
> commercial applications where a standardized platform-specific UI  
> was important. For him, that's a reason to avoid Squeak altogether.
>
> So with that (probably overly long) background, I can ask my  
> question, on my friend's behalf.
>
> Why, after 30 years, does Squeak still appear to be a non-standard,  
> almost toy-like user experience in the IDE? Is it the case that  
> changing that would be far too complex to undertake? Or is it that  
> the community of Squeak users just isn't largely motivated to worry  
> about this subject? Or is the absence of an economic incentive the  
> problem? Or IS there a problem?


Lack of software engineering.
Demo driven development.
Disconnection from good practices (refactoring, tests, code cleaning).

Does it ring the bell?

My point is that this is not link with Smalltalk but how people  
manage the code.


> Thanks for any wisdom you can share. This is one of the two big  
> objections I *always* get when I recommend someone look at Squeak  
> as a possible solution to a problem for which it appears to me to  
> be ideally suited linguistically and architecturally.
>
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> Dan Shafer
> Technology Visionary - Technology Assessment - Documentation
> "Looking at technology from every angle"
>
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