Cees de Groot wrote:
On 2/21/07, Andreas Raab andreas.raab@gmx.de wrote:
Should we actively pursue changes?
[I take it you won't mind getting answers from other candidates :-)]
Of course. I'm interested in getting a basic feeling for what the candidates think about rate of change, directions of change, how (or if) to deal with them etc. And your comments are right on topic.
Cheers, - Andreas
Yes.
The biggest weakness in Smalltalk/Squeak atm is that it doesn't scale well. At the very least, something in the area of namespacing is needed - this is one thing that Java got right. And personally, I think Goran's approach should be adopted ASAP because it is minimal while getting a long way into the direction of solving the problem at hand.
Beyond that - modules, components, or what you want to call them. I'm a Jini adept, and I've seen the power of having a network of cooperating components work for you. I also like E a lot, and think that some sandboxing system is required to scale Squeak - we must clean up the kernel to make it fully capability-based (also something that Java got more right than most people assume).
Also - I'm discussing this sort of stuff with a friend who's experimenting with a homebrew language - these components should carry around more information than just bytecode. They need to be "multimedial" in a sense, carrying diagrams, design notes, maybe even various partly-complete views of the source code, whatever it takes to make components (and sets of components) understandable to "users".
As what the board's role should be here: encouragement, and actively rallying to get things included. Also, I think that the primary focus of financial support should be in this area.
Oh- and the dogma of backwards compatibility has done more unnecessary damage than I can begin to tell, IMNSHO, so I'm all for easing/releasing that restriction between major releases.