David,
Welcome aboard. You are not completely wrong; you are also not completely correct.
I agree that growing Smalltalk's user base would be a wonderful goal. I also suspect it is not realistic, nor is it essential to Smalltalk's future success. Case in point: YOU found it; others will too. Our goal should be to have a best of breed tool waiting for them when they start to experiment.
As far as making a system in which to develop languages (a very reasonable assessment of Squeak's origins), there is indeed use for such things, if only to some computer scientists. To me, computers are a tool, and I am quite content to program them in Smalltalk and focus on my real work.
IMHO, the Squeak community should embrace both concepts. Some assume that means we must fork off a true Smalltalk system, leaving a volatile branch being for UI and language tinkerers. However, I suspect that most of those wanting a bleeding edge system would be very well served by running such code on top of any good Smalltalk environment.
You will sometimes see the phrase "don't break our toy." I have no desire to do that; I simply would like the toy refactored such that a robust tool (useful to people like me) would lurk underneath the toy. Then new arrivals such as yourself would have the benefit of the system style suited to their needs, with both styles supported by the same broad community.
Bill
"David Zmick" <dz0004455@...>dz0004455@... wrote:
I have been wondering how to make smalltalk a more "popular" language, because i think it is excellent, and i think it would be good to try to get other people to use it, because, i don't notice to many younger programmers, like myself, using smalltalk, though, i may be wrong. One of the first thing i would think of to promote smalltalk would be writing programs in smalltalk instead of just making smalltalk better, i am not trying to discourage improvement on smalltalk, but if all you are developing is a language for people to continue to develop a language in, it seems like a waste of time. The only program I know about, as in big, large scale programs, written in smalltalk is PetroVR, i may be wrong there to, but i see smalltalk as an excellent development environment and language, but, nothing big is written in it, and it will never grow if the community is focused entirely on making smalltalk better. I might be completely wrong, but that is what i have seen, but, i have only really payed attention for a couple of months, and i think it would be good to see some growth in smalltalk's popularity. :)
Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D. University of Florida Department of Anesthesiology PO Box 100254 Gainesville, FL 32610-0254
Email: bschwab@anest.ufl.edu Tel: (352) 846-1285 FAX: (352) 392-7029