Complexity and starting over on the JVM

Matthew Fulmer tapplek at gmail.com
Wed Feb 6 03:58:52 UTC 2008


On Tue, Feb 05, 2008 at 09:06:58PM -0600, Sean Heber wrote:
> I feel a little out of place commenting, as I am even less than a newbie 
> when it comes to Squeak/Smalltalk.  In fact, I've only started Squeak a few 
> times, poked around, and closed it in disgust and/or utter-confusion after 
> a time due to the overwhelming complexity (and, IMO, ugliness) of the UI 
> that hits like a brick to the face when first starting an image.
>
> So why am I here and why do I care?  I love the core principals of 
> Smallktalk (and Seaside!) so much that I've been subscribed to the list for 
> awhile just reading and watching and waiting for some sign of... I dunno... 
> social growth?

If you like the idea but not the look of Squeak, try some of the
more professional-looking Smalltalks. Seaside runs on most of
them.

> As an outsider looking in, what I see is a relatively closed community of 
> uber-experts who enjoy their exclusive membership in an exclusive club.  
> Looking past the UI and other complexities and shunning the (much larger) 
> outside world of file-based development feels like an unspoken hazing 
> ritual that newbies are asked to just accept blindly in order to join.

I find that this mailing list is a pretty poor reflection of the
attitudes of actual squeak users, due to the perpetual flaming
about {license, traits, namespaces, UI} by those who are *NOT*
doing anything about it. Come visit the IRC channel #squeak on
freenode to talk to actual users who like working on squeak,
chatting about most anything, and making new users feel welcome. 

> I have a hard time playing with Squeak because it feels so isolated by 
> design.  I want to make apps that fit in with my other apps.  Can I use 
> Squeak to make an OSX app that looks and acts like an OSX app, for example? 

You are correct here. Squeak is a very self-contained system,
and it is intentionally very portable and platform-independent
(more so than any other system I've seen, for sure). If you want
to do native Mac apps in smalltalk, maybe try Ambrai Smalltalk.

>  I honestly don't know because from what I've seen, Squeak seems to want to 
> be only about Squeak.  And, IMO, the core community reflects that same 
> insular attitude.  (Or vice-versa?)

Come to #squeak. You'll get a much better perspective.

> Just what *is* Squeak for, in the end?

I'd say it is for building applications, building tools, and
having fun, and having the support of a community that has been
collectively doing so for 35 years. There aren't many
communities with as many smart people as squeak has, with as
much thought expended on how the system and users work together.

-- 
Matthew Fulmer -- http://mtfulmer.wordpress.com/
Help improve Squeak Documentation: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/808



More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list