Hello everyone,
I think it's finally time for me to run for the Squeak Oversight Board
and give back to the wonderful Squeak/Smalltalk community!
First, let me introduce myself.
I've been following/loving Squeak since Dan Ingalls announced the birth
of this "new Smalltalk" in 1996! Besides being a fan of Squeak since
day 1, I have been professionally a Smalltalker since 1992. I started
with ObjectWorks 4.0 and quickly moved to VisualWorks 2.5. Since then,
I've been working mostly (and equally) with VisualAge and VisualWorks.
Did a few years of coding with VSE (plain) and VSE/PARTS as well. Throw
in some Gemstone and some Glorp and some TOPLink and you get a good
picture of my professional background. In all occasions, I was lucky
enough to work on big projects with big databases (DB/2, Gemstone,
Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server, Sybase & some MQSeries).
Besides "Smalltalk at work", I enjoy other Smalltalks I haven't used
professionally: ObjectStudio, Dolphin, Cuis, Pharo and, obviously,
Squeak! And yes, I'm sometimes nostalgic of "The Smalltalk Report",
JOOP, BYTE and the "Dr. Dobb's Journal" magazines! ;)
I have a particular interest in:
-Smalltalk communications with the "outside world", aka web services but
MOSTLY databases
-runtime image packaging mechanisms (i.e. VSE SLL, VW parcels, VAST
Runtime Packager, VW ImageStripper or building from a minimal image)
-modularity & modularization (no wonder, the first programming language
I learned was Modula-2!)
-development tools (Dolphin's IdeaSpace, Pharo's Playground, Refactoring
Browser, CodeCritics/SmallLint, GUI Builder, GToolkit)
-last, but not the least, Squeak's place on the current Smalltalk scene.
I have been under the impression, in recent years, that Squeak was
trying to find its place between Cuis & Pharo and be everything to
everyone and nice/compatible with everything & everyone. But Cuis is
Cuis. And Pharo is Pharo. And both forks have a clear path in mind but
I'm not sure Squeak knows what it is anymore and what it wants to be or
become. Add to that confusion, SqueakJS & PharoJS ! A few symptoms can
tell we're in a delicate place, starting with code compatibility and
code repositories!
Repositories (SqueakMap, SqueakSource, SqueakSource3, SmalltalkHub) are
filled with versions alternating from Pharo to Squeak and back! We lost
Scratch. Major projects like Glorp, Magma, Seaside, Moose, Roassal,
Magritte, PolyMath and others seemed to have moved away from Squeak. So
I think we need to take a step back and ask ourselves a few
philosophical questions:
-do we want to retain the original goal of being a
multimedia/education/experimenting development platform?
-do we want compatibility with other Smalltalks or just go our own way?
-can we target Raspberry Pi & cell phones as a possible and serious
Squeak platform?
So I would like to run for the SOB 2023 because I am a user, a developer
and... a Smalltalk lover.
P.S. Other non-Smalltalk related interests include: genetic algorithms,
chess, French literature (long story!), mathematics
P.P.S. I also like to code in Modula-2, Julia, R, Pascal, BASIC and
Oberon if that helps!
P.P.P.S. I'm on Windows and speak French : trouble ahead! ;)