diminishingly small number of programmers (was: 3.9 Oddities)

Ron Teitelbaum Ron at USMedRec.com
Mon Sep 11 15:04:57 UTC 2006


All,

I normally stay out of these conversations because doing is much more
important then talking (I like the tag that someone has that says: "talk
less, do more" or something like that)

It seems to me that there are a number of people that have put significant
time into Smalltalk that are disillusioned by the progress that has been
made by other languages.  (Including me, I've been doing Smalltalk for 10
years, which is not much by some people's standards but is a significant
investment from where I sit)

My opinion for what it is worth is that there has been considerable support
for Smalltalk, and many opportunities for the language in the past the have
not panned out.  Much of that was due to the high cost of entry, and the
high cost of support and maintenance.

Although Squeak has been around for a while now it is not as mature as other
Smalltalk projects.  There is a lot that still needs to be done.  I know a
lot of people have made suggestions about what should be done (including
me), and many people have countered with lots of reasons why they are not
done.  As a community, if we want to help squeak grow up, we need to find a
way to move past this stage of development (call it a transition from a paid
project run by very talented visionaries, to a community run development
platform [that could still be used as a "media authoring tool used by a huge
number of kids"]).  I believe that even though it appears that the community
is quite small compared to others, we can accomplish a lot with proper
organization and commitment.  (Look at Seaside as an example)

So my question for the community is this: Can we start a process where we
decide which pieces that the community needs, and find a way to help each
other achieve those goals.  Can we move past this "Scratch your own itch"
mentality to a more altruistic, "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours"
philosophy? 

My suggestion is for us to start a proper discussion about what really needs
to change, and for us to start planning those changes.  We need to put a
process behind what we are doing and try to commit to those changes.  We
need a real foundation, real projects, real support, and real progress.
Once we organize ourselves then we can talk about increasing the size of our
community.

Ron Teitelbaum
President / Principal Software Engineer
US Medical Record Specialists
Ron at USMedRec.com 

[Don't bury me where the hills are green, 
where the water runs cold, 
or next to a running stream.

Don't bury me where the flowers bloom,
where the trees are old,
or next to my comfy room,

Don't take me from my nice warm bed,
And box me up, 
Remember what I said.

Don't bury me, cause I'm not dead.]




> From: Andreas Raab
> Sent: Monday, September 11, 2006 8:11 AM
> 
> J J wrote:
> >> No tut-tut. Remember, we weren't vendors. You have to look at this
> >> (and other decisions) in relation to the big fish we were trying to
> >> fry (which was NOT to build a "free Smalltalk" even though that's what
> >> it unfortunately degenerated to).
> >
> > Are you saying that squeak being open source/free is a bad thing?
> 
> No, I'm saying that we failed to achieve what we were aiming for. Squeak
> being open and free is a very good thing but I'd rather have a media
> authoring tool used by a huge number of kids than a "free Smalltalk"
> used by a diminishingly small number of programmers.
> 
> Cheers,
>    - Andreas
> 





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