[Squeakfoundation]Brainstormin'

[Maarten Maartensz]

Hello Cees,

At 09:03 21-1-02 +0100, you wrote:

>Maarten Maartensz <maartens@xs4all.nl> said:

>>What IS the purpose of the Squeak Foundation maillist?
>>
>Discuss the  Squeak Foundation. Duh. The Squeak Foundation, like - say - the
>Apache Foundation or maybe the Open Office Foundation (IIRC - that now has
>StarOffice under its wings), should be the "official" organization
>representing Squeak (development, some products, whatever). This list is
there
>to discuss how the SqF should work, behave, look, feel, whatever.

Good. So brainstorming is to the point. Here are two follow-up questions,
simply to straighten out the facts:

(1) How is the current Squeak-Foundation related to current Squeak-Central?
(2) How is the current Squeak-Foundation related to the recent passing away
of Squeak-Central from Disney?

Reason for my questions: There is little point trying to set up a
Foundation if the Central - where most coding and coordinating still
happens - has other plans or targets than the planned Foundation.

>>Remark A: Get Squeak into regular university-courses!
>
>Yup. It's a-happening (Georgia), but only slowly. 

Well, my general point was not that it is not anywhere in a university (or
poly-technic), but that to promote and help Squeak a major and explicit
goal of those wishing to promote it should be to get it somehow into the
universities. The reason this is so important is that this works like a
seed for many more things.

[snip]

>>And as long as this does not happen, Squeak is bound to remain an effort by
>>a few handfuls of enthusiast hacking types, that remains almost unconnected
>>to "the Real World of C and Java", that are taught in very many
>>universities (and indeed seem to me mostly a waste of time, for nearly
>>anyone, especially anyone not concerned with writing commercial
>>applications but with doing real science - but this one cannot prove
>>without Squeak being present in regular university courses next to C and
>>Java).
>>
>I agree that teaching Java in a University (opposed to, say, the 'higher
>professional technical schools' - HTS, HIO - we have in the Netherlands) is a
>waste of time. But then, no-one is interested in academic knowledge anymore,
>it's all about being able to write 'Drs' (Master) in front of your name for a
>faster career launch in business...

Well - I've been thrown twice out of the University of Amsterdam for
protesting the decline of the Dutch universities, but in the end I did get
to be a drs. though not in philosophy but in psychology (and then in fact
mostly in mathematics and physics - and yes, I also have a B.A. in
philosophy). 

"And so it goes" - except that I don't believe that if most people
"democratically" desire to be rich, irresponsible and stupid all people
should conform, and indeed once in a - largish  - while I do meet students
who are genuinely into academic knowledge. I do grant their IQs tend to be
over 150 or so (i.o.w. they are 1 in 10.000 - and mostly as amazed as I was
when I entered universities in the 70ies and found it dedicated to
furthering the ends of .... the communist party, the more lunatic feminist
fringe etc.) But these few are the people I am interested in, and not in
the post-modern average uncivilized Dutch dummy, proud of being an
uncivilized financial go-getter. (Remember: I am in my 50-ies. I still had
to learn 5 foreign languages in grammar school; I still had to learn
grammatical Dutch, history, mathematics, physics etc. Younger Dutchmen
didn't, and don't know and can't judge what they miss. Indeed, most of them
don't read books at all, academic or not, and are PROUD of it. The average
IQ of the post-modern Dutch academic is 115, which in my time was some 15
points too low to enter grammar school, and far too low to graduate from a
university - pre-post-modern style. And no: I don't believe a high IQ is a
guarantee of anything, except in the way that being over 2 meters tall will
- ceteris paribus - tend to help you make a career in basketball, unfair as
this is for those of 1.65 m.)

And one of the reasons I am interested in Squeak is that I am interested in
trying to tide over what remains of genuine academics through the current
Post-Modern Dark Age. Also, inside the  universities there still are some
who try to do the same, though mostly indeed in the genuine sciences and
mathematics, and in things requiring real brains and real work, like
sinology or medicine. For them, as for me, a really good and versatile
programming environment like Squeak could be (but is not yet) would be a
truly excellent tool to think with and publish with (rather than write a
commercially selling application with, which doesn't  interest me at all).

Indeed, if I were convinced that "no-one is interested in academic
knowledge anymore" I would give up on Squeak  also. (Note for Dutchmen:
Read the columns of Vincent Icke in the NRC-Handelsblad. He is a
theoretical physicist of similar concerns, outlook, and age.)

>But I do think that if you were to show MatMorphs to some selected people,
>you'd stand a good chance of arousing their interest ;-)

True - but when I prodded the Argentinians to update their work so that it
does work in the current Squeak (so that I could show it to some
mathematical friends) I got no reply. (And currently I assume they are
trying to remain alive, queueing up to get a few pesos from the bank, and
awaiting the next Videla.)

>>Remark B: Put some really good general documentation together, maintain it
>>and update it regularly!
>>
>Point taken. Squeak has been lacking in the area of 'first user experience'.
>On the other hand, everything is moving so fast that the books that have been
>published are outdated 1.5 seconds after they go to the printer. The solution
>is probably to have the documentation in the image, but in a format that
>people can print out if they care to (a lot of them do).

Yes and no. The solution I see is to FIRST write a good and complete
documentation for the current Squeak and THEN maintain it. This must be a
coordinated effort by a number of capable people, and not what is happening
on the Swikis, which is far too random by too many people of too different
levels and kinds of ability and interest. (You also can't compile a medical
manual from the random conversations on a medical congress, however clever,
and learning medicine that way will take you a life-time, at least. But
that IS the current level of promoting and teaching Squeak: Through mostly
random electronic conversation.)

The best effort in this direction, and probably the best hope, is what
Tansel Ersavas is doing with Squeak News.

>>Remark C: "Internet communities" are mostly would-be: Get some real people
>>together!
>>
>Agreed. I have had the best results by a combination of live meetings and
then
>using the Internet to continue from there. However, meeting face-to-face is
>expensive (we could organize a "Dutch Squeak User's Group" meeting with the
>snap of the finger, but still traveling expenses in such a small country
could
>be too high for some poor student - or do they still get free public
>transpor?. Imagine a "German Squeak User's Group" meeting...), and a virtual
>community is better than no community at all. We'll have to make-do with it
>for a majority of the work...

Mostly true, but my point is this. One of the many things I have been - see
above - is "a student leader" (around 1980 - and before that I was a
farmhand in Norway) and a considerable amount of what happens on the Squeak
and Smalltalk lists is similar to what I saw in my student days: Would-be
radicals posturing inside small communities with radical proposals and
ideologies to Save the World - who mostly turn out too afraid and timid to
really DO something that might harm their own private career-interest
("IMHO"). 

What is needed - in a truly awful but modern phrase - ("IMHO") is people
with "Leadership Potential", and these you can only find by meeting them
face to face. (The Charisma Factor doesn't tend to shine brightly through
e-mail!)  And I agree that once you've found them you don't need many more
meetings, but I believe that until you've found them you won't lift Squeak
from where it is now.

Speaking for myself, after 6 months of dedicated reading of the Squeak
maillist, I still know hardly anything of the academic qualifications,
outlook, concerns, or ages of hardly anyone on the list. Well: That may be
a quite sufficient basis for mailing about programming and developing a
programming language, but is not a sufficient  basis for getting something
done in real life in real society.

Regards,

Maarten.


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Maarten Maartensz. Homepage:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~maartens/ 
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