[squeak-dev] Re: Nothing much [was: what is holding back Smalltalk?]

Klaus D. Witzel klaus.witzel at cobss.com
Sat Nov 22 06:25:38 UTC 2008


On Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:23:13 +0100, Claus Kick wrote:

> Klaus D. Witzel wrote:
>
>> Me thinks that the Smalltalk community is healthy and vibrant--it is   
>> "just" a community form one would not expect for Ruby or Python or  
>> Perl,  etc. To get impression of my impression take a look at what  
>> *actually*  happened during the *recent* months:
>
> Why would one not expect this community for Ruby or Python or Perl?  
> Could you please explain what you mean, for this puzzles me ...

There are (almost uncountable ;) many things which shape these  
communities; perhaps I focus on some of the obvious from a day-to-day  
perspective:

- starting+using Smalltalk is always starting+using the whole system,  
there are no parts, in an absolute sense, and there is no way to change  
that

- the Smalltalker has generally broader knowledge about his *whole*  
system, think of navigating "implementers of" as an example

- the Smalltalker has generally deeper knowledge about his *whole* system,  
think of navigating "senders of" as an example

This (and more ;) naturally orients the community along completely  
different dimensions, beginning with the learning curve, through things  
you can change+reuse, up to things you can achieve (like VMMaker+Simulator  
or Etoys or Scratch or Croquet or Moose or DabbleDB or Sophie), with a  
handful of people, in the Smalltalk community.

/Klaus

-- 
"If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it".  
Albert Einstein




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