[squeak-dev] Re: A comparative article (was STON - Smalltalk Object Notation)

H. Hirzel hannes.hirzel at gmail.com
Wed May 9 03:18:25 UTC 2012


Hi

I agree with Göran that Tirade may coexist with JSON and STON.

However to bring it up to a level of a viable alternative at least
some 50..70 additional hours of work are needed. This estimate is
based on playing around with it a bit with it one week ago.

I think what Tirade desperately needs at the moment is a fully worked
out example and more test cases. Here STON has an advantage because it
can rely on an existing specification.


Regarding the number of test cases.
I do not like to entrust my data to a system which only has 7 test
cases. STON has 80 and is backward compatible to something I know.

However to be fair, the 7 test cases in Tirade are complex and can be
split into different smaller ones making it easier to tackle what is
going on.

In terms of the name I agree with Janko, from a marketing perspective
it is not useful at all all. It is actually not all that technical, it
is about data exchange by sending messages. The original idea of
Smalltalk in 1980.

Something like

SSMS

- simple smalltalk message sends
- simple smalltalk messages sequence
- smalltalk subset message sends
- smalltalk subset messages sequence

A name which is more self-explanatory to a Smalltalker and it this
sense is 'technical'.

Interesting as well it the possibility to implement it in other
languages such as
JavaScript
Java
C-Sharp
Python
Ruby
....

But as I said that could be a lot of work (specification,
implementation, tests and documentation) and so the example given in
Smalltalk needs to we more worked out.

Thank you for this interesting discussion
--Hannes





On 5/8/12, Göran Krampe <goran at krampe.se> wrote:
> Hey!
>
> On 05/08/2012 10:05 AM, Janko Mivšek wrote:
>> Hi Göran,
>>
>> One quick note: STON has more chance to be adopted than Tirade simply
>> because of the name. STON is closer to JSON in people's mind, while
>> Tirade, what that means?
>
> Do note that IMHO Tirade does not really compete with STON/JSON. As I
> think I wrote in the article I tend to think JSON trumphs STON but that
> Tirade may be more powerful and interesting in some Smalltalk specific
> cases.
>
>> For me it sounds something tyran-like , pretty
>> non-attractive therefore. And because most of us don't have time to go
>> to details, such outside things like name matters. We are also more and
>> more choosing things based on their perception and not reality.  More on
>> their outside form than on their real value.
>
> Hmmm, I don't think I agree that the name is all that important for this
> kind of highly *technical* packages.
>
> STON is closer to JSON which is good since it basically is a true
> superset and tries to fill the exact same niche.
>
> But I agree, for "high profile" packages naming is important - like I
> convinced Nicolas to rename JTalk to something nicer.
>
> Tirade was just a funny name based on the "cascade" nature of the format:
>
> "a long angry speech or scolding. Synonyms: diatribe, harangue, rant"
>
> I mean, don't people have a sense of humor? :)
>
>> So, to have bigger adoption rate we need to take care about naming
>> things as well.
>
> Hehe, well... I am sorry Janko, I don't think Tirade is such a bad name
> and I don't think it would be worth renaming either.
>
> Any other more technical thoughts/comments?
>
> regards, Göran
>
>


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