[Squeakfoundation]Re: Proposal for TWO official releases

[Joshua 'Schwa' Gargus]

Well!  This has turned out to be an interesting conversation.  Before
I make a few short responses to what you've written below, let me say
that you've convinced me not to use the first person in my class
comments.  You've made a good case that the confusion caused to some
readers outweighs my mild pleasure in doing so.

On Sat, Apr 20, 2002 at 05:20:26PM +0200, Maarten Maartensz wrote:

<snip>

> >> And similarly in ALL the other cases of "I am ..." ALL of which (1) make a
> >> piece of comment present itself as animated entity
> >
> >No, the piece of comment presents the _class_ as an animated entity.
> >When I write "I am a human", the paper I write it on is not saying
> >that it is a human.  It is communicating on behalf of another entity,
> >me.  Similarly, a class comment is communicating on behalf of the
> >class.  I personally have had no problems with this, right from the
> >first time I started Squeaking.
> 
> I agree that is the intent, but I started with "Taken literally". And there
> are all manner of quite subtle problems here. For example, what about
> 
> (*) "I am a piece of text that says something about itself but didn't write
> itself" ?
> 
> In (*) the denotation of "I" presumably is (*) and not the writer of the text.
> 
> Since I am quite aware of these and related problems, I had right from the
> first time of Squeaking problems with this. Perhaps this is mostly
> personal, but even so that doesn't change the oddity of the "I am" Comments.

One thing about "I am" comments in Smalltalk is that they are
uniformly applied.  "I am" never means the comment itself; it always
refers either to the class the comment belongs to, or to a particular
instance of that class.  Once this is understood, the meaning is
unambiguous.

However, I agree that confusion might result before this understanding is
reached, and that a feeling of oddness might persist long afterwards.

<snip> 
 
> >Are you suggesting that people might become confused about this point, and
> >believe that the computer is alive?  This might be a valid criticism if
> >EToys were to present itself in this way, but presumably by the time you
> >are hacking Smalltalk, you understand computers well enough to recognize
> >this as a manner of speaking.
> 
> Well ... it depends. I do, and you do - but there are quite a few
> philosophers (such as Hauser or Dennett, for example) who insist that
> computers think, not as a manner of speaking, but like you and I do, if not
> as good or as slow as we are on some cognitive tasks.

Your point is taken.

<snip>

> >> However, I am sure there is a large and sensitive theme here, and I for my
> >> part feel sure that one major reason for Smalltalk having less of a
> >> following than it deserves is the way Smalltalkers write about code. 
> >
> >I doubt that this is a major reason.
> 
> It would be nice to know.  

<snip>

> ... we agree on
> the beauties of Smalltalk and Squeak, and agree both are far less popular
> and well-known than they deserve to be. This requires an explanation,
> especially as regards Smalltalk, which exists for 30 years now and is
> mostly unknown though beautiful. (My explanation in this mail is not
> complete even if true: The price of Smalltalk in the 1980-ies also was
> important in keeping Smalltalk small at that time. I certainly couldn't
> afford it, though I first saw it around 1985 and was much  impressed both
> by it and its hefty price.)

I agree that its early price was probably a large issue (although I am
too young to have a first-hand impression).  Also, it is not new, and
nowadays, "new" is too often equated with "better".  Once you've had
your chance, people tend to be unwilling to give you another one.  In
many cases, this is a reasonable heuristic for dealing with the deluge
of incoming information: "I saw that before, it wasn't what I was
looking for, and it probably isn't now".  However, in some cases (such
as Squeak), something worthwhile is missed.

The good news is that Squeak has a community that may be able to
improve it to the point that a large audience notices it again.  Part
of this process is adding new whiz-bang functionality, and the other
part is smoothing rough edges.  Thanks for pointing out places to
improve.

Bye,
Joshua


> 
> <snip of remaining text as dealing with another issue>
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Maarten.
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------
> Maarten Maartensz. Homepage:
> http://www.xs4all.nl/~maartens/ 
> ------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Squeakfoundation mailing list
> Squeakfoundation@lists.squeakfoundation.org
> http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/listinfo/squeakfoundation