[Squeakfoundation]Brainstormin'

Tue, 22 Jan 2002 20:29:16 +0100

Beste Cees,

At 21:29 21-1-02 +0100, you wrote:

>Maarten Maartensz <maartens@xs4all.nl> said:
>>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.
>>
>No worries here. Dan will outline the details tomorrow, but maybe it says
>enough that he's the designated Executive Director of SqF and a core
member of
>SqC. 

Yes, I am waiting with baited breath. As I read the situation, Squeak must
learn to start swimming by itself, not supported by Disney, or Apple, or
another megabucks commercial entity. That's good for moral and good for
freedom and independence, but tricky socially, since we all live in
societies were the main values in practice are monetary, and most things of
value do need some structured social support and some financing in some way.

>>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).
>>
>
>>The best effort in this direction, and probably the best hope, is what
>>Tansel Ersavas is doing with Squeak News.
>>
>I do think that there's more to come - there are books on Squeak (outdated
>against the current version, probably, but that hasn't killed the Java
>bookmarket either ;-)), and I'm quite sure that with a slowly increasing
>crowd, the number of titles will rise at well. Anyway, compared to other
>language I saw happening from early on, Squeak has a remarkably large
>portfolio of printed material. It's maybe just an on-line manual (like what
>you get with VisualWorks) that's missing. 
>
>I must say, Squeak News is great fun - but I don't think it counts as
>documentation...

Well - I read some sensible ideas and results in this context the last days
(O'Reilly for one; a French book on Squeak I haven't seen yet and would
like the details on, such as ISDN), and the VisualWorks stuff is quite good
(by and large) and an example to emulate. (Briefly: straighten out the many
tips on the Swiki, make a coherent logical presentation of it, make that
into a pdf, and put it on an easily found place next to the latest Squeak.)

For more, see my other mails - but from my point of view Squeak News,
notably the November issue and Tansel Ersavas' manuals, are not merely
great fun but very interesting and quite useful. Indeed, had I received
this a few months earlier it would have saved me - literally! - quite a few
weeks of tinkering and experimenting. 

>>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.
>>
>Don't forget that a lot of the "Squeak incrowd" (myself expressly *not*
>included in that group at the moment) knows each other quite well in real
>life. A lot of them visit OOPSLA, Camp Smalltalk, etcetera and have had a
>chance to meet in person on more than one occasion. So it's not exactly that
>there are a bunch of strangers here are trying to set something up (in
fact, I
>wouldn't be surprised at all if I'd be the only guy on the list of names Dan
>put up for the Squeak Foundation that hasn't met anyone else).

Indeed. Well, the OOPSLA and Camp Smalltalk goings on (which I also read
with interest, thanks to John McIntosh) support my general point that it is
simply human to want to really meet other humans you are seriously
cooperating with, and indeed also support the notion that individual people
are willing to spend quite a lot of money and time to do just that.

Also, I do think what is going on with the development of Squeak is quite
an interesting and amazing thing socially and psychologically, in that you
have here quite a lot of quite intelligent people of quite different
outlooks, backgrounds, faiths, and nationalities cooperating on something
as abstract and ideal as a programming language. So  here I quite support
your notion of documenting it all carefully "for posterity", if only as an
example of what intelligent people of good will can do, not for money but
for fun, from idealism, for esthetical reasons, or mere intellectual
curiosity. 

>-- 
>Cees de Groot               http://www.cdegroot.com     <cg@cdegroot.com>
>GnuPG 1024D/E0989E8B 0016 F679 F38D 5946 4ECD  1986 F303 937F E098 9E8B

Regards,

Maarten.

P.S. I do believe the mailer - still - has some oddities, in that some of
my replies arrive at the foundation-list without any problem, while I
repeatedly get some returned by the mailer deamon of my provider even
though they are sent in just the same format. (For the moment I will repost
and leave it at that, and hope it's a Redmond idiocy somehow somewhere.)

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