+1 too.

Credit:
Squeak suffers from being hardly coupled with something that is intentionally
good hearted, theoretically well supported and it genuinely deserves credit for
that. But time told it was a poor design. It won't help to deny reality. In
practice it didn't work well. Is not that it was completely useless. It solves a
problem but is not the expected breakthrough. And there are reasons for that.
Make space in your mind to stop ignoring those.

Price:
The price the project (paid by its comunity) for soving that problem became
unacceptably high and that's why the current crisis happened.

UI without sense:
Squeak make countless undeniable and unjustifiable violations to UI design and
usability principles. I mean BASIC ones. Please stop rationalizing on theoretic
stuff that didn't work. Prioritize what did work (inside and outside ST
universe). Hint: there is iphone and the rest of the world. Honour design
principles or stop self lying about who can use your stuff. Decide if you want
to make software for human beings or damn engeneers/geeks.

Oprtunity: 
Do less to do more. I see Squeak has proved to be extremely fertile. If Squeak
gets unbloated of features it can focus in doing less much much better and
profit from what is good at: fertile to fast implementing models.
But today nobody want just models. Those are easy. What people wants is
convenience. Convenient interfaces with sense. So the oportunity for squeak
would be to do that in interfaces that totally rock. Is not the art of the
buttons or window borders. Is not adding features. Actually removing some will
make it better. But is a lot more than that. Smalltalkers are known by its
design capabilities? other comunities do. Hear how they think. Learn. Reinvent.

Sustainability:
If a project do not have one clear mission, it will consume any momentum fast
while being unable to make rapport with any tribe to renew efforts. It could had
value to prove some theory, but in the end (today) who cares? for other pruposes
it will be invisible: #fail.
Stop making artifacts that makes you beg for tolerance about UI (AKA
manuals/education?) crying with colleagues becaouse people "don't get it". Is
not their fault! Instead do something that is worth to put money into it.
Something inspiring. Something worthy to talk about (with smalltalk outsiders).

Sorry if this sounds hard but honest feedback is more valuable than water with
sugar.

sebastian

> -----Mensaje original-----
> De: squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org 
> [mailto:squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org] En 
> nombre de Ramon Leon
> Enviado el: Wednesday, July 01, 2009 01:19
> Para: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
> Asunto: Re: Usability and look-and-feel (was Re: [squeak-dev] 
> The future of Squeak & Pharo (was Re: [Pharo-project] [ANN] 
> Pharo MIT licenseclean))
> 
> > Bert, are you serious?
> >
> > Enough with the children! It's been done and redone and 
> overdone. The
> > past and the future confounded. Why can't we live the 
> present living?
> > You're talking about something that might (or might not) produce
> > engineers in the next, say, 20 years? Smalltalk will be around 50
> > years by then. I find it painful that our community wouldn't be a
> > little bit more practical, for a change..
> >
> > Right here, right now.
> >
> > Ian.
> >
> > PS: I am so sorry... I don't even have spare children to furiously
> > train on Squeak...
> >
> > --
> > http://mecenia.blogspot.com/
> 
> +10
> 
> Seriously, stop talking about kids, who cares, I'll be retired by the
> time they're useful.  Programming languages are tools that are
> primarily used by and useful for adults, they should be aimed at
> adults.  I want Smalltalk to be usable now, not at some unspecified
> time in some imaginary future where it takes over the world by getting
> kids before they've been introduced to other environments.  It's pure
> fantasy to think this'll happen, it won't.  This is the attitude that
> holds Squeak back and prevents anyone from taking it too seriously.
> This is why Pharo will continue to steal mind-share and Squeak will
> die.
> 
> Ramon Leon
> http://onsmalltalk.com
>