[squeak-dev] [Cuis] Cuis

Josh Gargus josh at schwa.ca
Sun Jan 24 19:36:34 UTC 2010


On Jan 23, 2010, at 10:44 PM, Friedrich Dominicus wrote:

> Josh Gargus <josh at schwa.ca> writes:
> 
>> 
>> 
>> The "community" doesn't want only one thing, and different people in it want
>> different things to different degrees.  I don't dispute that what you have
>> described above is desirable, in principle, to the vast majority of community
>> members.  However, it is fundamentally at odds with other goals that various
>> community members hold dear.  A balance must be struck.
> You are right, but let's as it that way:
> - how many of you do activly work in the "Kernel!"
> - how many of you do use it for application development
> 
> I would be suprised to see a ratio much higher than 1:10 000 or even
> 1: 100 000 (kernel dev/application dev).
> 
> As I understand Keiths posting he's mainly an application developer and
> so it's clear that he does not like to re-write his code over and over
> again (for whatever good/bad technical reason). 
> 
> I just can tell you a story from Eiffel wonderland where this ratia
> surely was much more in favour of "application" developers.  One
> development team in Eiffel has broken old code with nearly every "minor"
> update. This means software once written and "working" just stops. If
> you ever have encountered that, you surely will understand Keiths points
> very well. 
> 
> There's IMHO no better way to drive away people but to break their code
> over and over again... 
> 


Fair enough.  These are eminently valid concerns.  I'm not yet convinced that the trunk approach is doomed to break everything, or that Keith's approach is necessarily any better.  However, I do want to end this smoldering flame war once and for all.  So, I guess we're going to have to get to the bottom of this...


>> 
>> Here's a very specific example.  I would like to see more integrated support
>> for concurrent programming in the Squeak kernel.  Toward that end,
>> I've added a
>> trivial implementation of "promises" to the trunk (hopefully, I'll take it
>> further relatively soon... one of the things I've done in the interim was to
>> re-read Mark Miller's dissertation).  
> Well so you are interested in another thing.


Nothing wrong with that, right?

The goals of my post were as follows:
- to establish clearly that compatibility is not the only thing that the community cares about (it also cares about "progress")
- to determine whether Keith acknowledges this fact
- if so, to determine whether his approach may address the issue in some way that I missed


> Well so you probably do not
> see the points of Keiths mails. 


But I do, at least regarding the outcomes that he hopes to avoid.   I'm just not convinced that his proposal the right way to go, but I'm making an honest effort to understand the issues.

Cheers,
Josh



> 
> 
> Regards
> Friedrich
> 
> 
> -- 
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