I agree. I think Squeak is a bunch of different groups. Since Smalltalk was the prototype for the modern day personal computer platforms, Mac OS and Windows, they have similar issues. Each of them have different communities to support as well. They have their users who just want to do some word processing, e-mail, and web browsing. They have their "power users" who want to do desktop publishing, web publishing; photo and video editing, business functions, games, etc. They have a development community that writes this software. And they have the system level coders who write system utilities for these platforms. These are different from the Squeak communities, but I'm sure similar dynamics are involved. Each time the OS vendor produces a new upgrade, they recognize they need to provide compatibility and "goodies" to each of these communities in order for the platform to thrive.
---Mark
-------------- Original message -------------- From: Lex Spoon lex@cc.gatech.edu
Howard Stearns writes:
Who is Squeak for? What are the guiding principles for decisions?
There's been a lot of discussion about this lately -- as always. So I thought some folks might (or might not!) be interested in the philosophy that Squeak is defined not by technical nor procedural means, but as a social phenomenon among the people who happen to consider themselves Squeakers (or Smalltalkers).
Many years ago, Kent Pitman made this argument about Lisp, and I think he said it well: http://www.nhplace.com/kent/PS/Lambda.html
Thanks for the link, Howard, I look forward to reading it.
I view Squeak as a common area for a lot of different groups, and thus the social aspect cannot be ignored if you want to understand Squeak. It's not a project with a single goal and a 5-year plan for getting there.
Brenda Laurel compares the situation to Renaissance Festivals, and has a great way of putting it: "Everyone there is having a good time, but everyone there is having a *different* good time."
As a quick stab, we have:
- The Squeakland project, Alan Kay's favorite branch, which uses
Squeak as a new kind of media. Squeakland tries to
- Myriad computer-science research groups who love having a free,
malleable Smalltalk as a base to experiement from.
Classroom usage for teaching how objects work.
Development. Smalltalk is very productive, and Squeak is
a good one.
- ... and maybe a part of the Hundred Dollar Laptop.
An older article I wrote tries to make the same enumeration, as well as sketch what kind of bilaws would make any sense for such a diverse group:
http://people.squeakfoundation.org/article/44.html
Anyway, I'm sure I left some folks out. What do others think?
-Lex