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. :)
On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 04:45:18PM -0600, David Zmick 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.
I am 22, which is younger than everyone else I've asked here.
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.
If it is fun, it is not a waste of time for that person. . But you are right; it should not be the only direction we pursue. I really want to push that as the vision for the next release team.
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.
There are lots of big seaside projects; the biggest is dabbledb.com. Croquet is pretty big too.
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. :)
im 14
On Jan 29, 2008 5:00 PM, Matthew Fulmer tapplek@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 04:45:18PM -0600, David Zmick 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.
I am 22, which is younger than everyone else I've asked here.
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.
If it is fun, it is not a waste of time for that person. . But you are right; it should not be the only direction we pursue. I really want to push that as the vision for the next release team.
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.
There are lots of big seaside projects; the biggest is dabbledb.com. Croquet is pretty big too.
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. :)
-- Matthew Fulmer -- http://mtfulmer.wordpress.com/ Help improve Squeak Documentation: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/808
On Jan 29, 2008 6:00 PM, Matthew Fulmer tapplek@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 04:45:18PM -0600, David Zmick 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.
I am 22, which is younger than everyone else I've asked here.
I was a 25 year old mechanical engineer when I saw the Aug 81 Byte magazine cover story on Smalltalk. For far too many years I let myself be swayed by "experts". At first it was those who said that "real" Smalltalk required expensive workstations, then after Digitalk shattered that notion, there were various and sundry issues raised about the need to keep Smalltalk "pure". People like yourself and David(great ideas man!!!) can learn a lot from this community, but don't let people discourage you from your vision. This kind of thinghttp://squeak.funkencode.com/2008/01/29/smalltalk-reloaded-missing-bits-the-achilles-heel/has been going on for a long time, sadly to our collective detriment IMO. The good news is that Squeak's story is still unfolding and you can help shape it according to your vision!
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.
If it is fun, it is not a waste of time for that person. . But you are right; it should not be the only direction we pursue. I really want to push that as the vision for the next release team.
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.
There are lots of big seaside projects; the biggest is dabbledb.com. Croquet is pretty big too.
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. :)
-- Matthew Fulmer -- http://mtfulmer.wordpress.com/ Help improve Squeak Documentation: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/808
On 29-Jan-08, at 2:45 PM, David Zmick wrote:
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. :)
Why would it be good if Smalltalk were more popular?
Colin
so it wont die out
On Jan 29, 2008 5:14 PM, Colin Putney cputney@wiresong.ca wrote:
On 29-Jan-08, at 2:45 PM, David Zmick wrote:
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. :)
Why would it be good if Smalltalk were more popular?
Colin
On 29-Jan-08, at 3:19 PM, David Zmick wrote:
so it wont die out
Well, that seems unlikely to happen any time soon. Smalltalk has been around, in one form or another, for nearly 40 years.
I suppose if something much, much better came along, we might all switch, but that would be a good thing, wouldn't it?
Colin
it depends on how much better it is. I think there isnt anything better than smalltalk, partly because of how supportive the community is, i never had that with java, and never found anything like this for c++, and, smalltalk is easy to understand, once you get over how different it is from other languages. I like the oure object orientation.
On Jan 29, 2008 5:29 PM, Colin Putney cputney@wiresong.ca wrote:
On 29-Jan-08, at 3:19 PM, David Zmick wrote:
so it wont die out
Well, that seems unlikely to happen any time soon. Smalltalk has been around, in one form or another, for nearly 40 years.
I suppose if something much, much better came along, we might all switch, but that would be a good thing, wouldn't it?
Colin
The benefits of popularity seem clear. There would be more smart people with more spare time to contribute good ideas and code. There would be more jobs and a better chance of making a living using the language. The second benefit would feed into the first, and vice-versa.
The question is whether the benefits outweigh the costs. Since the benefits seem obvious to me, I'll assume that you're really expressing skepticism about whether the benefits outweigh the costs. What do you think the costs are? (I can think of a few, but I'm curious about what others think)
Josh
On Jan 29, 2008, at 3:14 PM, Colin Putney wrote:
On 29-Jan-08, at 2:45 PM, David Zmick wrote:
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. :)
Why would it be good if Smalltalk were more popular?
Colin
loss of the community the way it is now, with a mailing list like this, my inbox is overwhelming, and i cant imagine it even more messages
On Jan 29, 2008 5:42 PM, Joshua Gargus schwa@fastmail.us wrote:
The benefits of popularity seem clear. There would be more smart people with more spare time to contribute good ideas and code. There would be more jobs and a better chance of making a living using the language. The second benefit would feed into the first, and vice-versa.
The question is whether the benefits outweigh the costs. Since the benefits seem obvious to me, I'll assume that you're really expressing skepticism about whether the benefits outweigh the costs. What do you think the costs are? (I can think of a few, but I'm curious about what others think)
Josh
On Jan 29, 2008, at 3:14 PM, Colin Putney wrote:
On 29-Jan-08, at 2:45 PM, David Zmick wrote:
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. :)
Why would it be good if Smalltalk were more popular?
Colin
On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:42:52 -0800, Joshua Gargus schwa@fastmail.us wrote:
The question is whether the benefits outweigh the costs. Since the benefits seem obvious to me, I'll assume that you're really expressing skepticism about whether the benefits outweigh the costs. What do you think the costs are? (I can think of a few, but I'm curious about what others think)
I'm wondering if one of the benefits would be that we wouldn't have to have this discussion again. ;-)
i didn't know this conversation was already had
On Jan 29, 2008 5:47 PM, Blake blake@kingdomrpg.com wrote:
On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:42:52 -0800, Joshua Gargus schwa@fastmail.us wrote:
The question is whether the benefits outweigh the costs. Since the benefits seem obvious to me, I'll assume that you're really expressing skepticism about whether the benefits outweigh the costs. What do you think the costs are? (I can think of a few, but I'm curious about what others think)
I'm wondering if one of the benefits would be that we wouldn't have to have this discussion again. ;-)
On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:47:17 -0800, David Zmick dz0004455@gmail.com wrote:
i didn't know this conversation was already had
On Jan 29, 2008 5:47 PM, Blake blake@kingdomrpg.com wrote:
On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:42:52 -0800, Joshua Gargus schwa@fastmail.us wrote:
The question is whether the benefits outweigh the costs. Since the benefits seem obvious to me, I'll assume that you're really expressing skepticism about whether the benefits outweigh the costs. What do you think the costs are? (I can think of a few, but I'm curious about what others think)
I'm wondering if one of the benefits would be that we wouldn't have to have this discussion again. ;-)
Yeah. It's an annual event, along with the licensing debate, introduction of new graphic systems.... I'm sure I'm missing some.
It's not a =bad= conversation, though, despite my snark.
ok, i havent been here a year yet :)
On Jan 29, 2008 5:53 PM, Blake blake@kingdomrpg.com wrote:
On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:47:17 -0800, David Zmick dz0004455@gmail.com wrote:
i didn't know this conversation was already had
On Jan 29, 2008 5:47 PM, Blake blake@kingdomrpg.com wrote:
On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:42:52 -0800, Joshua Gargus schwa@fastmail.us wrote:
The question is whether the benefits outweigh the costs. Since the benefits seem obvious to me, I'll assume that you're really
expressing
skepticism about whether the benefits outweigh the costs. What do
you
think the costs are? (I can think of a few, but I'm curious about
what
others think)
I'm wondering if one of the benefits would be that we wouldn't have to have this discussion again. ;-)
Yeah. It's an annual event, along with the licensing debate, introduction of new graphic systems.... I'm sure I'm missing some.
It's not a =bad= conversation, though, despite my snark.
On Jan 29, 2008, at 3:47 PM, Blake wrote:
On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:42:52 -0800, Joshua Gargus schwa@fastmail.us wrote:
The question is whether the benefits outweigh the costs. Since the benefits seem obvious to me, I'll assume that you're really expressing skepticism about whether the benefits outweigh the costs. What do you think the costs are? (I can think of a few, but I'm curious about what others think)
I'm wondering if one of the benefits would be that we wouldn't have to have this discussion again. ;-)
:-)
As I wrote the last email, I was hoping that we could at least avoid starting the discussion right from the beginning each time.
Josh
On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:51:08 -0800, Joshua Gargus schwa@fastmail.us wrote:
I'm wondering if one of the benefits would be that we wouldn't have to have this discussion again. ;-)
:-)
As I wrote the last email, I was hoping that we could at least avoid starting the discussion right from the beginning each time.
True story: I had eight years of Spanish 1 in school.
Why? Every year there were new kids, so we started from scratch EVERY SINGLE TIME.
I know my present tense, though, I tell you what.
===Blake===
On 29-Jan-08, at 3:42 PM, Joshua Gargus wrote:
The benefits of popularity seem clear. There would be more smart people with more spare time to contribute good ideas and code. There would be more jobs and a better chance of making a living using the language. The second benefit would feed into the first, and vice-versa.
Well, I agree that smart people contributing to the community would be a good thing. But popularity doesn't necessarily imply smart people, it just means *more* people. I think the community we have today is actually quite good. The "unpopularity" of Smalltalk acts as a filter. To be a Smalltalker you've got to be smart enough to recognize the benefits, confident enough to leave the mainstream, and resourceful enough to overcome the obstacles that working in an "unpopular" language entails. If Smalltalk were more popular, I doubt we would actually get all that many more "smart people" than we have now.
Now, making a living using the language. Popularity would probably bring more jobs, but it would also bring more programmers to compete for those jobs. It would probably also lower the average salary of Smalltalk jobs. That might or might not be a good thing.
The question is whether the benefits outweigh the costs. Since the benefits seem obvious to me, I'll assume that you're really expressing skepticism about whether the benefits outweigh the costs. What do you think the costs are? (I can think of a few, but I'm curious about what others think)
I guess there are two costs. One is the effort and sacrifices required to make Smalltalk popular. For example, we might try creating a Ruby- on-Rails clone in Smalltalk, in order to take advantage of the current vogue in web apps. That would be a fair amount of work, presumably done by people who might otherwise be working on things that benefit the existing community. Or perhaps Seaside could be "dumbed down" so it could be marketed to the kind of developer that doesn't like the "magic" of continuations. That makes Seaside worse for the rest of us.
The other cost is all the noise that would get introduced into the community. Sure, Java has more libraries than Smalltalk, but most of them are just crap. All they do is make it harder to find the good stuff, and diffuse the energy of the community.
In general, I think we'd be better to focus not on popularity, but on community. Yes, a certain size is required for the community to function well, but beyond that there are diminishing returns from further growth. As long as the VM gets maintained, libraries written, bugs fixed, questions answered, newbies encouraged - as long as the community is functioning - Smalltalk is sufficiently popular.
Colin
i agree, but i also think that we should develop client applications, not just the language. For example in "Squeak By Example" you make quinto, and the rest is about developing, you dont really make anything, just learn how to make the language better. In my java book, there are at least 20 applications you write. My point is, i think smalltalk should be used for application development instead of just developing smalltalk. It seems pointless to me to develop a language so that people can continue to develop the language, its like an infinite loop. Thats what i see.
On Jan 29, 2008 6:51 PM, Colin Putney cputney@wiresong.ca wrote:
On 29-Jan-08, at 3:42 PM, Joshua Gargus wrote:
The benefits of popularity seem clear. There would be more smart people with more spare time to contribute good ideas and code. There would be more jobs and a better chance of making a living using the language. The second benefit would feed into the first, and vice-versa.
Well, I agree that smart people contributing to the community would be a good thing. But popularity doesn't necessarily imply smart people, it just means *more* people. I think the community we have today is actually quite good. The "unpopularity" of Smalltalk acts as a filter. To be a Smalltalker you've got to be smart enough to recognize the benefits, confident enough to leave the mainstream, and resourceful enough to overcome the obstacles that working in an "unpopular" language entails. If Smalltalk were more popular, I doubt we would actually get all that many more "smart people" than we have now.
Now, making a living using the language. Popularity would probably bring more jobs, but it would also bring more programmers to compete for those jobs. It would probably also lower the average salary of Smalltalk jobs. That might or might not be a good thing.
The question is whether the benefits outweigh the costs. Since the benefits seem obvious to me, I'll assume that you're really expressing skepticism about whether the benefits outweigh the costs. What do you think the costs are? (I can think of a few, but I'm curious about what others think)
I guess there are two costs. One is the effort and sacrifices required to make Smalltalk popular. For example, we might try creating a Ruby- on-Rails clone in Smalltalk, in order to take advantage of the current vogue in web apps. That would be a fair amount of work, presumably done by people who might otherwise be working on things that benefit the existing community. Or perhaps Seaside could be "dumbed down" so it could be marketed to the kind of developer that doesn't like the "magic" of continuations. That makes Seaside worse for the rest of us.
The other cost is all the noise that would get introduced into the community. Sure, Java has more libraries than Smalltalk, but most of them are just crap. All they do is make it harder to find the good stuff, and diffuse the energy of the community.
In general, I think we'd be better to focus not on popularity, but on community. Yes, a certain size is required for the community to function well, but beyond that there are diminishing returns from further growth. As long as the VM gets maintained, libraries written, bugs fixed, questions answered, newbies encouraged - as long as the community is functioning - Smalltalk is sufficiently popular.
Colin
and also, i like the community very much, and i agree that is probably because of the "filtering" :)
On Jan 29, 2008 9:24 PM, David Zmick dz0004455@gmail.com wrote:
i agree, but i also think that we should develop client applications, not just the language. For example in "Squeak By Example" you make quinto, and the rest is about developing, you dont really make anything, just learn how to make the language better. In my java book, there are at least 20 applications you write. My point is, i think smalltalk should be used for application development instead of just developing smalltalk. It seems pointless to me to develop a language so that people can continue to develop the language, its like an infinite loop. Thats what i see.
On Jan 29, 2008 6:51 PM, Colin Putney cputney@wiresong.ca wrote:
On 29-Jan-08, at 3:42 PM, Joshua Gargus wrote:
The benefits of popularity seem clear. There would be more smart people with more spare time to contribute good ideas and code. There would be more jobs and a better chance of making a living using the language. The second benefit would feed into the first, and vice-versa.
Well, I agree that smart people contributing to the community would be a good thing. But popularity doesn't necessarily imply smart people, it just means *more* people. I think the community we have today is actually quite good. The "unpopularity" of Smalltalk acts as a filter. To be a Smalltalker you've got to be smart enough to recognize the benefits, confident enough to leave the mainstream, and resourceful enough to overcome the obstacles that working in an "unpopular" language entails. If Smalltalk were more popular, I doubt we would actually get all that many more "smart people" than we have now.
Now, making a living using the language. Popularity would probably bring more jobs, but it would also bring more programmers to compete for those jobs. It would probably also lower the average salary of Smalltalk jobs. That might or might not be a good thing.
The question is whether the benefits outweigh the costs. Since the benefits seem obvious to me, I'll assume that you're really expressing skepticism about whether the benefits outweigh the costs. What do you think the costs are? (I can think of a few, but I'm curious about what others think)
I guess there are two costs. One is the effort and sacrifices required to make Smalltalk popular. For example, we might try creating a Ruby- on-Rails clone in Smalltalk, in order to take advantage of the current vogue in web apps. That would be a fair amount of work, presumably done by people who might otherwise be working on things that benefit the existing community. Or perhaps Seaside could be "dumbed down" so it could be marketed to the kind of developer that doesn't like the "magic" of continuations. That makes Seaside worse for the rest of us.
The other cost is all the noise that would get introduced into the community. Sure, Java has more libraries than Smalltalk, but most of them are just crap. All they do is make it harder to find the good stuff, and diffuse the energy of the community.
In general, I think we'd be better to focus not on popularity, but on community. Yes, a certain size is required for the community to function well, but beyond that there are diminishing returns from further growth. As long as the VM gets maintained, libraries written, bugs fixed, questions answered, newbies encouraged - as long as the community is functioning - Smalltalk is sufficiently popular.
Colin
but squeak b example is not about developing application nor developing squeak. Is it about making people understanding squeak.
On Jan 30, 2008, at 4:24 AM, David Zmick wrote:
i agree, but i also think that we should develop client applications, not just the language. For example in "Squeak By Example" you make quinto, and the rest is about developing, you dont really make anything, just learn how to make the language better. In my java book, there are at least 20 applications you write. My point is, i think smalltalk should be used for application development instead of just developing smalltalk. It seems pointless to me to develop a language so that people can continue to develop the language, its like an infinite loop. Thats what i see.
but this is not the case. Fixing bug in library is important too. But we do not fix the language, except traits and {} smalltalk did not change in the last 30 years. Compare to java or any other language to understand (beside Cobol) what a stable syntax means.
Stef
On Jan 29, 2008 6:51 PM, Colin Putney cputney@wiresong.ca wrote:
On 29-Jan-08, at 3:42 PM, Joshua Gargus wrote:
The benefits of popularity seem clear. There would be more smart people with more spare time to contribute good ideas and code. There would be more jobs and a better chance of making a living using the language. The second benefit would feed into the first, and vice-versa.
Well, I agree that smart people contributing to the community would be a good thing. But popularity doesn't necessarily imply smart people, it just means *more* people. I think the community we have today is actually quite good. The "unpopularity" of Smalltalk acts as a filter. To be a Smalltalker you've got to be smart enough to recognize the benefits, confident enough to leave the mainstream, and resourceful enough to overcome the obstacles that working in an "unpopular" language entails. If Smalltalk were more popular, I doubt we would actually get all that many more "smart people" than we have now.
Now, making a living using the language. Popularity would probably bring more jobs, but it would also bring more programmers to compete for those jobs. It would probably also lower the average salary of Smalltalk jobs. That might or might not be a good thing.
The question is whether the benefits outweigh the costs. Since the benefits seem obvious to me, I'll assume that you're really expressing skepticism about whether the benefits outweigh the costs. What do you think the costs are? (I can think of a few, but I'm curious about what others think)
I guess there are two costs. One is the effort and sacrifices required to make Smalltalk popular. For example, we might try creating a Ruby- on-Rails clone in Smalltalk, in order to take advantage of the current vogue in web apps. That would be a fair amount of work, presumably done by people who might otherwise be working on things that benefit the existing community. Or perhaps Seaside could be "dumbed down" so it could be marketed to the kind of developer that doesn't like the "magic" of continuations. That makes Seaside worse for the rest of us.
The other cost is all the noise that would get introduced into the community. Sure, Java has more libraries than Smalltalk, but most of them are just crap. All they do is make it harder to find the good stuff, and diffuse the energy of the community.
In general, I think we'd be better to focus not on popularity, but on community. Yes, a certain size is required for the community to function well, but beyond that there are diminishing returns from further growth. As long as the VM gets maintained, libraries written, bugs fixed, questions answered, newbies encouraged - as long as the community is functioning - Smalltalk is sufficiently popular.
Colin
On Jan 29, 2008 7:51 PM, Colin Putney cputney@wiresong.ca wrote:
On 29-Jan-08, at 3:42 PM, Joshua Gargus wrote:
The benefits of popularity seem clear. There would be more smart people with more spare time to contribute good ideas and code. There would be more jobs and a better chance of making a living using the language. The second benefit would feed into the first, and vice-versa.
Well, I agree that smart people contributing to the community would be a good thing. But popularity doesn't necessarily imply smart people, it just means *more* people. I think the community we have today is actually quite good. The "unpopularity" of Smalltalk acts as a filter. To be a Smalltalker you've got to be smart enough to recognize the benefits, confident enough to leave the mainstream, and resourceful enough to overcome the obstacles that working in an "unpopular" language entails.
While I don't agree, I also don't see anything inherently wrong or bad about this view - to each his own. However, it isn't consistent with the original goals of Smalltalk nor the "programming for the rest of us" statement currently on the Squeak About page. I know there are others who don't want to see the community expand very much and if that is a consensus then the About page ought to be changed to reflect it. Although Smalltalk as an SDK is a stretch in my view, Croquet makes clear who its audience is - truth in advertising. If the Squeak community really doesn't want Squeak to be for "everyone" that ought to be clear up front.
Cheers,
Laurence
If Smalltalk were more popular, I doubt we would actually get all that many more "smart people" than we have now.
Now, making a living using the language. Popularity would probably bring more jobs, but it would also bring more programmers to compete for those jobs. It would probably also lower the average salary of Smalltalk jobs. That might or might not be a good thing.
The question is whether the benefits outweigh the costs. Since the benefits seem obvious to me, I'll assume that you're really expressing skepticism about whether the benefits outweigh the costs. What do you think the costs are? (I can think of a few, but I'm curious about what others think)
I guess there are two costs. One is the effort and sacrifices required to make Smalltalk popular. For example, we might try creating a Ruby- on-Rails clone in Smalltalk, in order to take advantage of the current vogue in web apps. That would be a fair amount of work, presumably done by people who might otherwise be working on things that benefit the existing community. Or perhaps Seaside could be "dumbed down" so it could be marketed to the kind of developer that doesn't like the "magic" of continuations. That makes Seaside worse for the rest of us.
The other cost is all the noise that would get introduced into the community. Sure, Java has more libraries than Smalltalk, but most of them are just crap. All they do is make it harder to find the good stuff, and diffuse the energy of the community.
In general, I think we'd be better to focus not on popularity, but on community. Yes, a certain size is required for the community to function well, but beyond that there are diminishing returns from further growth. As long as the VM gets maintained, libraries written, bugs fixed, questions answered, newbies encouraged - as long as the community is functioning - Smalltalk is sufficiently popular.
Colin
On 29-Jan-08, at 9:48 PM, Laurence Rozier wrote:
While I don't agree, I also don't see anything inherently wrong or bad about this view - to each his own. However, it isn't consistent with the original goals of Smalltalk nor the "programming for the rest of us" statement currently on the Squeak About page. I know there are others who don't want to see the community expand very much and if that is a consensus then the About page ought to be changed to reflect it. Although Smalltalk as an SDK is a stretch in my view, Croquet makes clear who its audience is - truth in advertising. If the Squeak community really doesn't want Squeak to be for "everyone" that ought to be clear up front.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating that we make the community into some kind of elitist club where outsiders aren't welcome. I really like the way this community treats newcomers, and I wouldn't want to change that. I'm a recent arrival myself!
What I *am* saying is that I don't think we should be trying to achieve "popularity." We should put our efforts into developing our technology and empowering the community. If that happens to attract new members, great! If not, that's fine too. The community we have today is large enough to be successful.
Colin
What I *am* saying is that I don't think we should be trying to achieve "popularity." We should put our efforts into developing our technology and empowering the community. If that happens to attract new members, great! If not, that's fine too. The community we have today is large enough to be successful.
Colin
+1 on this. Popularity should not be a primary target not near to be primary. It should be a natural consequence. Is not I don't like popularity, on the contrary, but it should come when success is guaranteed (useful popularity). Put efforts to force popularity easily blurs the focus the community achieved to make Squeak what it is todays.
Cheers,
Sebastian
On Jan 30, 2008 4:20 AM, Colin Putney cputney@wiresong.ca wrote:
On 29-Jan-08, at 9:48 PM, Laurence Rozier wrote:
While I don't agree, I also don't see anything inherently wrong or bad about this view - to each his own. However, it isn't consistent with the original goals of Smalltalk nor the "programming for the rest of us" statement currently on the Squeak About page. I know there are others who don't want to see the community expand very much and if that is a consensus then the About page ought to be changed to reflect it. Although Smalltalk as an SDK is a stretch in my view, Croquet makes clear who its audience is - truth in advertising. If the Squeak community really doesn't want Squeak to be for "everyone" that ought to be clear up front.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating that we make the community into some kind of elitist club where outsiders aren't welcome. I really like the way this community treats newcomers, and I wouldn't want to change that. I'm a recent arrival myself!
What I *am* saying is that I don't think we should be trying to achieve "popularity."
Agreed.
We should put our efforts into developing our technology and empowering the community.
I agree - the question is what is needed to empower a community that includes "everyone"?
If that happens to attract new members, great! If not, that's fine too. The community we have today is large enough to be successful.
I suppose it depends on what the definition of "success" is. The constant and justified "million euros" comments are a clear reminder that there are unmed needs. In 2000, I had to hire a Smalltalker for an internet startup. I interviewed or had conversations a good number of very experienced folk all of whom really wanted to be making their living from Smalltalk. It was hard then and still is. Yes Seaside and Croquet are opening doors but do the math - that's not an abundance of positions even for the most talented Squeakers. Getting a Squeak based project funded inside a company(large or small) is also hard. As a result Smalltalk and Squeak will continue to survive well into the future, but most of the people attracted to it(along with their families, friends and co-workers) will not get to use it broadly. We'll continue to use software that just sucks or is a poor imitation which is sad because it doesn't have to be that way and for a few short years it wasn'thttp://squeak.funkencode.com/2007/11/10/smalltalk-reloaded-bits-of-history-from-the-golden-age/. There are ways out of the current mess, but people first have to acknowledge the mess and/or there has to be a significant wave of new adopters. Then the community has to be willing to make the difficult tradeoffs needed to climb out of the quicksand. In my view, survival is a necessary ingredient for success not the goal.
Laurence
Colin
Well, despite what has been said here we at Pinesoft are (successfully) devloping commercial applications with Squeak.
-----Original Message----- From: squeak-dev-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:squeak-dev-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org]On Behalf Of Laurence Rozier Sent: 30 January 2008 3:33 PM To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list Subject: Re: Promoting Squeak/Smalltalk
On Jan 30, 2008 4:20 AM, Colin Putney cputney@wiresong.ca wrote:
On 29-Jan-08, at 9:48 PM, Laurence Rozier wrote:
While I don't agree, I also don't see anything inherently wrong or bad about this view - to each his own. However, it isn't consistent with the original goals of Smalltalk nor the "programming for the rest of us" statement currently on the Squeak About page. I know there are others who don't want to see the community expand very much and if that is a consensus then the About page ought to be changed to reflect it. Although Smalltalk as an SDK is a stretch in my view, Croquet makes clear who its audience is - truth in advertising. If the Squeak community really doesn't want Squeak to be for "everyone" that ought to be clear up front.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating that we make the community into some kind of elitist club where outsiders aren't welcome. I really like the way this community treats newcomers, and I wouldn't want to change that. I'm a recent arrival myself!
What I *am* saying is that I don't think we should be trying to achieve "popularity." Agreed.
We should put our efforts into developing our technology and empowering the community. I agree - the question is what is needed to empower a community that includes "everyone"?
If that happens to attract new members, great! If not, that's fine too. The community we have today is large enough to be successful. I suppose it depends on what the definition of "success" is. The constant and justified "million euros" comments are a clear reminder that there are unmed needs. In 2000, I had to hire a Smalltalker for an internet startup. I interviewed or had conversations a good number of very experienced folk all of whom really wanted to be making their living from Smalltalk. It was hard then and still is. Yes Seaside and Croquet are opening doors but do the math - that's not an abundance of positions even for the most talented Squeakers. Getting a Squeak based project funded inside a company(large or small) is also hard. As a result Smalltalk and Squeak will continue to survive well into the future, but most of the people attracted to it(along with their families, friends and co-workers) will not get to use it broadly. We'll continue to use software that just sucks or is a poor imitation which is sad because it doesn't have to be that way and for a few short years it wasn't. There are ways out of the current mess, but people first have to acknowledge the mess and/or there has to be a significant wave of new adopters. Then the community has to be willing to make the difficult tradeoffs needed to climb out of the quicksand. In my view, survival is a necessary ingredient for success not the goal.
Laurence
Colin
On Jan 30, 2008 10:38 AM, Gary Chambers gazzaguru2@btinternet.com wrote:
Well, despite what has been said here we at Pinesoft are (successfully) devloping commercial applications with Squeak.
Congratulations -- that's good to see! We need more successes. Where can one download your UI widgets? Laurence
-----Original Message----- From: squeak-dev-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:squeak-dev-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org]On Behalf Of Laurence Rozier Sent: 30 January 2008 3:33 PM To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list Subject: Re: Promoting Squeak/Smalltalk
On Jan 30, 2008 4:20 AM, Colin Putney cputney@wiresong.ca wrote:
On 29-Jan-08, at 9:48 PM, Laurence Rozier wrote:
While I don't agree, I also don't see anything inherently wrong or bad about this view - to each his own. However, it isn't consistent with the original goals of Smalltalk nor the "programming for the rest of us" statement currently on the Squeak About page. I know there are others who don't want to see the community expand very much and if that is a consensus then the About page ought to be changed to reflect it. Although Smalltalk as an SDK is a stretch in my view, Croquet makes clear who its audience is - truth in advertising. If the Squeak community really doesn't want Squeak to be for "everyone" that ought to be clear up front.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating that we make the community into some kind of elitist club where outsiders aren't welcome. I really like the way this community treats newcomers, and I wouldn't want to change that. I'm a recent arrival myself!
What I *am* saying is that I don't think we should be trying to achieve "popularity." Agreed.
We should put our efforts into developing our technology and empowering the community. I agree - the question is what is needed to empower a community that includes "everyone"?
If that happens to attract new members, great! If not, that's fine too. The community we have today is large enough to be successful. I suppose it depends on what the definition of "success" is. The constant and justified "million euros" comments are a clear reminder that there are unmed needs. In 2000, I had to hire a Smalltalker for an internet startup. I interviewed or had conversations a good number of very experienced folk all of whom really wanted to be making their living from Smalltalk. It was hard then and still is. Yes Seaside and Croquet are opening doors but do the math - that's not an abundance of positions even for the most talented Squeakers. Getting a Squeak based project funded inside a company(large or small) is also hard. As a result Smalltalk and Squeak will continue to survive well into the future, but most of the people attracted to it(along with their families, friends and co-workers) will not get to use it broadly. We'll continue to use software that just sucks or is a poor imitation which is sad because it doesn't have to be that way and for a few short years it wasn't. There are ways out of the current mess, but people first have to acknowledge the mess and/or there has to be a significant wave of new adopters. Then the community has to be willing to make the difficult tradeoffs needed to climb out of the quicksand. In my view, survival is a necessary ingredient for success not the goal.
Laurence
Colin
It is included in Damien's dev images. otherwise, the latest version is always at:
MCHttpRepository location: 'http://www.squeaksource.com/UIEnhancements' user: '' password: ''
for Monticello.
If doing a "from scratch" install, it is always best to ensure that as few windows/morphs are present before loading (MC is not atomic yet).
-----Original Message----- From: squeak-dev-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:squeak-dev-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org]On Behalf Of Laurence Rozier Sent: 30 January 2008 4:04 PM To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list Subject: Re: Promoting Squeak/Smalltalk
On Jan 30, 2008 10:38 AM, Gary Chambers gazzaguru2@btinternet.com wrote:
Well, despite what has been said here we at Pinesoft are (successfully) devloping commercial applications with Squeak. Congratulations -- that's good to see! We need more successes. Where can one download your UI widgets? Laurence
-----Original Message----- From: squeak-dev-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:squeak-dev-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org]On Behalf Of Laurence Rozier Sent: 30 January 2008 3:33 PM To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list Subject: Re: Promoting Squeak/Smalltalk
On Jan 30, 2008 4:20 AM, Colin Putney cputney@wiresong.ca wrote:
On 29-Jan-08, at 9:48 PM, Laurence Rozier wrote:
While I don't agree, I also don't see anything inherently wrong or bad about this view - to each his own. However, it isn't consistent with the original goals of Smalltalk nor the "programming for the rest of us" statement currently on the Squeak About page. I know there are others who don't want to see the community expand very much and if that is a consensus then the About page ought to be changed to reflect it. Although Smalltalk as an SDK is a stretch in my view, Croquet makes clear who its audience is - truth in advertising. If the Squeak community really doesn't want Squeak to be for "everyone" that ought to be clear up front.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating that we make the community into some kind of elitist club where outsiders aren't welcome. I really like the way this community treats newcomers, and I wouldn't want to change that. I'm a recent arrival myself!
What I *am* saying is that I don't think we should be trying to achieve "popularity." Agreed.
We should put our efforts into developing our technology and empowering the community. I agree - the question is what is needed to empower a community that includes "everyone"?
If that happens to attract new members, great! If not, that's fine too. The community we have today is large enough to be successful. I suppose it depends on what the definition of "success" is. The constant and justified "million euros" comments are a clear reminder that there are unmed needs. In 2000, I had to hire a Smalltalker for an internet startup. I interviewed or had conversations a good number of very experienced folk all of whom really wanted to be making their living from Smalltalk. It was hard then and still is. Yes Seaside and Croquet are opening doors but do the math - that's not an abundance of positions even for the most talented Squeakers. Getting a Squeak based project funded inside a company(large or small) is also hard. As a result Smalltalk and Squeak will continue to survive well into the future, but most of the people attracted to it(along with their families, friends and co-workers) will not get to use it broadly. We'll continue to use software that just sucks or is a poor imitation which is sad because it doesn't have to be that way and for a few short years it wasn't. There are ways out of the current mess, but people first have to acknowledge the mess and/or there has to be a significant wave of new adopters. Then the community has to be willing to make the difficult tradeoffs needed to climb out of the quicksand. In my view, survival is a necessary ingredient for success not the goal.
Laurence
Colin
Or the current "stable" release can be found in the dev Universe under "User Interface". The ToolBuilder integration is worth loading also.
-----Original Message----- From: squeak-dev-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:squeak-dev-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org]On Behalf Of Gary Chambers Sent: 30 January 2008 4:20 PM To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list Subject: RE: Promoting Squeak/Smalltalk
It is included in Damien's dev images. otherwise, the latest version is always at:
MCHttpRepository location: 'http://www.squeaksource.com/UIEnhancements' user: '' password: ''
for Monticello.
If doing a "from scratch" install, it is always best to ensure that as few windows/morphs are present before loading (MC is not atomic yet).
-----Original Message----- From: squeak-dev-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:squeak-dev-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org]On Behalf Of Laurence Rozier Sent: 30 January 2008 4:04 PM To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list Subject: Re: Promoting Squeak/Smalltalk
On Jan 30, 2008 10:38 AM, Gary Chambers gazzaguru2@btinternet.com wrote:
Well, despite what has been said here we at Pinesoft are (successfully) devloping commercial applications with Squeak. Congratulations -- that's good to see! We need more successes. Where can one download your UI widgets? Laurence
-----Original Message----- From: squeak-dev-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:squeak-dev-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org]On Behalf Of Laurence Rozier Sent: 30 January 2008 3:33 PM To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list Subject: Re: Promoting Squeak/Smalltalk
On Jan 30, 2008 4:20 AM, Colin Putney cputney@wiresong.ca wrote:
On 29-Jan-08, at 9:48 PM, Laurence Rozier wrote:
While I don't agree, I also don't see anything inherently wrong or bad about this view - to each his own. However, it isn't consistent with the original goals of Smalltalk nor the "programming for the rest of us" statement currently on the Squeak About page. I know there are others who don't want to see the community expand very much and if that is a consensus then the About page ought to be changed to reflect it. Although Smalltalk as an SDK is a stretch in my view, Croquet makes clear who its audience is - truth in advertising. If the Squeak community really doesn't want Squeak to be for "everyone" that ought to be clear up front.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating that we make the community into some kind of elitist club where outsiders aren't welcome. I really like the way this community treats newcomers, and I wouldn't want to change that. I'm a recent arrival myself!
What I *am* saying is that I don't think we should be trying to achieve "popularity." Agreed.
We should put our efforts into developing our technology and empowering the community. I agree - the question is what is needed to empower a community that includes "everyone"?
If that happens to attract new members, great! If not, that's fine too. The community we have today is large enough to be successful. I suppose it depends on what the definition of "success" is. The constant and justified "million euros" comments are a clear reminder that there are unmed needs. In 2000, I had to hire a Smalltalker for an internet startup. I interviewed or had conversations a good number of very experienced folk all of whom really wanted to be making their living from Smalltalk. It was hard then and still is. Yes Seaside and Croquet are opening doors but do the math - that's not an abundance of positions even for the most talented Squeakers. Getting a Squeak based project funded inside a company(large or small) is also hard. As a result Smalltalk and Squeak will continue to survive well into the future, but most of the people attracted to it(along with their families, friends and co-workers) will not get to use it broadly. We'll continue to use software that just sucks or is a poor imitation which is sad because it doesn't have to be that way and for a few short years it wasn't. There are ways out of the current mess, but people first have to acknowledge the mess and/or there has to be a significant wave of new adopters. Then the community has to be willing to make the difficult tradeoffs needed to climb out of the quicksand. In my view, survival is a necessary ingredient for success not the goal.
Laurence
Colin
Possibly, need to clear with the company first though :-)
-----Original Message----- From: squeak-dev-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:squeak-dev-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org]On Behalf Of stephane ducasse Sent: 31 January 2008 9:33 PM To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list Subject: Re: Promoting Squeak/Smalltalk
can you tell us more :)
Stef
On Jan 30, 2008, at 4:38 PM, Gary Chambers wrote:
Well, despite what has been said here we at Pinesoft are (successfully) devloping commercial applications with Squeak
On Jan 30, 2008 12:42 AM, Joshua Gargus schwa@fastmail.us wrote:
What do you think the costs are? (I can think of a few, but I'm curious about what others think)
Well, as other's have said, languages having huge libraries doesn't mean they're good. Of course a good counter argument to that is "who cares, I can get X done very quickly. We can always fix the library later if it matters".
But the thing I would be most worried about is that what would happen to the *language* if it became popular. If Squeak became the #1 used language tomorrow that would mean we get the bulk of the people programming today. And the bulk of the people programming today seem *extremely* adverse to learning new languages or new (better!) ways of doing things. Even with the small-ish community we have now, we see requests to add some silly/useless/redundant feature to the language that their old language had, every couple of months.
As for the job question: http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html (especially bullet 16).
thanks guys, this is all great stuff, and i am very glad i started this(although you probably talk about it anyway)
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.
i did find it, but only because my dad works for a company that writes software in smalltalk PetroVR-Caesar Systems
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating that we make the community into some kind of elitist club where outsiders aren't welcome. I really like the way this community treats newcomers, and I wouldn't want to change that. I'm a recent arrival myself!
Thats like the hacker communtity, ive been trying to learn about security for some time now, and it is very hard to get in to learn about anything if you are not already l337("elite") :)
On Jan 30, 2008 11:43 AM, Jason Johnson jason.johnson.081@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 30, 2008 12:42 AM, Joshua Gargus schwa@fastmail.us wrote:
What do you think the costs are? (I can think of a few, but I'm curious about what others think)
Well, as other's have said, languages having huge libraries doesn't mean they're good. Of course a good counter argument to that is "who cares, I can get X done very quickly. We can always fix the library later if it matters".
But the thing I would be most worried about is that what would happen to the *language* if it became popular. If Squeak became the #1 used language tomorrow that would mean we get the bulk of the people programming today. And the bulk of the people programming today seem *extremely* adverse to learning new languages or new (better!) ways of doing things. Even with the small-ish community we have now, we see requests to add some silly/useless/redundant feature to the language that their old language had, every couple of months.
As for the job question: http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html (especially bullet 16).
On 30-Jan-08, at 2:36 PM, David Zmick wrote:
Thats like the hacker communtity, ive been trying to learn about security for some time now, and it is very hard to get in to learn about anything if you are not already l337("elite") :)
Believe me David, anyone that claims to be 'l337', isn't and probably never will be.
tim -- tim Rowledge; tim@rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim Fractured Idiom:- ALOHA OY - Love; greetings; farewell; from such a pain you should never know
well i know
On Jan 30, 2008 6:07 PM, tim Rowledge tim@rowledge.org wrote:
On 30-Jan-08, at 2:36 PM, David Zmick wrote:
Thats like the hacker communtity, ive been trying to learn about security for some time now, and it is very hard to get in to learn about anything if you are not already l337("elite") :)
Believe me David, anyone that claims to be 'l337', isn't and probably never will be.
tim
tim Rowledge; tim@rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim Fractured Idiom:- ALOHA OY - Love; greetings; farewell; from such a pain you should never know
I've only been using Squeak a very short time (for robot main program) and would like to continue, however a rather serious limitation for robotics is computer vision and numerical methods used for things like Kalman and particle filters. Python, for example, has PIL (Python Imaging Library), numPy (numerical methods) and sciPy (scientific methods), among others.
http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/ http://www.scipy.org/ http://numpy.scipy.org/
These libraries greatly enhance Python for use in technology fields.
I'm too much a novice to venture any opinions on how this point of distinction should or could be considered by the Smalltalk community, but it's definitely something that will affect me personally and must similarly affect others working on robots, electronic instruments, scientific experiments and so forth.
- Robert
On Tue, 2008-01-29 at 16:45 -0600, David Zmick 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. :)
Somebody should work on that nd I uderstand your point.
On Jan 30, 2008, at 12:31 AM, Robert F. Scheer wrote:
I've only been using Squeak a very short time (for robot main program) and would like to continue, however a rather serious limitation for robotics is computer vision and numerical methods used for things like Kalman and particle filters. Python, for example, has PIL (Python Imaging Library), numPy (numerical methods) and sciPy (scientific methods), among others.
http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/ http://www.scipy.org/ http://numpy.scipy.org/
These libraries greatly enhance Python for use in technology fields.
I'm too much a novice to venture any opinions on how this point of distinction should or could be considered by the Smalltalk community, but it's definitely something that will affect me personally and must similarly affect others working on robots, electronic instruments, scientific experiments and so forth.
- Robert
On Tue, 2008-01-29 at 16:45 -0600, David Zmick 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. :)
Part of what those libraries do is already in Squeak. Additional stuff is freely available in the web (for example my PhotoSqueak image processing framework). For sure there is more to be done. I wouldn't call that a limitation. It's just that people who needs it should get together and do it. That's all. Those Python libraries exists because there is a large community of people building and using them.
Cheers, Juan Vuletich
stephane ducasse wrote:
Somebody should work on that nd I uderstand your point.
On Jan 30, 2008, at 12:31 AM, Robert F. Scheer wrote:
I've only been using Squeak a very short time (for robot main program) and would like to continue, however a rather serious limitation for robotics is computer vision and numerical methods used for things like Kalman and particle filters. Python, for example, has PIL (Python Imaging Library), numPy (numerical methods) and sciPy (scientific methods), among others.
http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/ http://www.scipy.org/ http://numpy.scipy.org/
These libraries greatly enhance Python for use in technology fields.
I'm too much a novice to venture any opinions on how this point of distinction should or could be considered by the Smalltalk community, but it's definitely something that will affect me personally and must similarly affect others working on robots, electronic instruments, scientific experiments and so forth.
- Robert
On Tue, 2008-01-29 at 16:45 -0600, David Zmick 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. :)
Robert F. Scheer a écrit :
I've only been using Squeak a very short time (for robot main program) and would like to continue, however a rather serious limitation for robotics is computer vision and numerical methods used for things like Kalman and particle filters. Python, for example, has PIL (Python Imaging Library), numPy (numerical methods) and sciPy (scientific methods), among others.
http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/ http://www.scipy.org/ http://numpy.scipy.org/
These libraries greatly enhance Python for use in technology fields.
I'm too much a novice to venture any opinions on how this point of distinction should or could be considered by the Smalltalk community, but it's definitely something that will affect me personally and must similarly affect others working on robots, electronic instruments, scientific experiments and so forth.
You are right, these libraries are necessary if you doing some serious things with image processing and robots. We are several here using Smalltalk to control robots, maybe we should share our code and needs.
Search for "robot" in SqueakSource web site, you will found several existing projects.
Best regards, -- oooo Serge Stinckwich OOOOOOOO Université de Caen>CNRS UMR 6072>GREYC>MAD OOESUGOO oooooo Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)] \ / ##
On Jan 29, 2008 5:45 PM, David Zmick dz0004455@gmail.com 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 believe we can have both, that eliminating the current imbalance would help all
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. :)
Hi,
On Jan 29, 2008 11:45 PM, David Zmick dz0004455@gmail.com wrote:
I have been wondering how to make smalltalk a more "popular" language,
I can find different options:
- distribute flyers (http://damien.cassou.free.fr/) - present Smalltalk/Squeak/Seaside (https://svn.squeak.org/Advertisement/presentations/squeak_jm2l_en/) - help people working on the Smalltalk entry point (the dev-images, the documentation...) - live on #squeak irc and answer questions - develop programs with Smalltalk/Seaside and advertise
Hi,
Please note that ESUG (the European Smalltalk Users Group) is a non- profit organization that promotes Smalltalk since 1991. ESUG has many promotion actions : -encourage (financially) people write papers about Smalltalk in magazines -encourage researchers to use Smalltalk and say it in conferences, -Support people to give talks Smalltalk and related technologies (e.g. Seaside) -Pay students to develop open source software during summer (SummerTalk program) -Sponsor Smalltalk related events -Support Smalltalk open-source initiatives (e.g. Squeak foundation :-) -Sponsor students to visit laboratories doing Smalltalk -Organize Smalltalk events and particularly a yearly Smalltalk dedicated conference that gathers Smalltalkers for all countries worldwide. --ESUG has a student volunteers program for its conferences: every year accommodation and a free registration are offered to about 15 students that help local organizers for dealing with the conference logistics --BTW, I have a scoop for squeakers here : The 16th ESUG Smalltalk conference will be held in Amsterdam next summer. Don't miss it!
The ESUG board is open for supporting other projects. So, if you have ideas contact us.
Noury Bouraqadi ------------------------------------------------------------------ Dr. Noury Bouraqadi - Enseignant/Chercheur Responsable de l'enseignement de l'informatique ARMINES - Ecole des Mines de Douai - Dept. I.A. http://vst.ensm-douai.fr/noury
European Smalltalk Users Group Board http://www.esug.org ------------------------------------------------------------------
On 30 janv. 08, at 08:16, Damien Cassou wrote:
Hi,
On Jan 29, 2008 11:45 PM, David Zmick dz0004455@gmail.com wrote:
I have been wondering how to make smalltalk a more "popular" language,
I can find different options:
- distribute flyers (http://damien.cassou.free.fr/)
- present Smalltalk/Squeak/Seaside
(https://svn.squeak.org/Advertisement/presentations/squeak_jm2l_en/)
- help people working on the Smalltalk entry point (the dev-images,
the documentation...)
- live on #squeak irc and answer questions
- develop programs with Smalltalk/Seaside and advertise
-- Damien Cassou
To me one of the issues that we have to attack to make Smalltalk more popular in the business arena is: isolation.
I mean, currently Smalltalk developments are "isolated" in two ways:
- If you choose an Smalltalk, you can't migrate easily to another one.
The "core" framework is more or less the same for all Smalltalks (collections, streams, exceptions, SUnit). But when you start using another things like networking, databases, UI... porting from one Smalltalk to another still requires a lot of work.
Another issue on porting are tools for "source code packages". For example the code of Aconcagua (the unit framework created at Mercap), is very portable: it was created on VisualAge, and them ported to work on GemStone, Squeak and VisualWorks. Camp Smalltalk Rosseta was used to port the initial version from VAST to Squeak and VW, but the required work was not trivial, and maintaing "source code packages" for each Smalltalk flavor is really tedious.
I know that there is a Monticello package loader con VW Public Store, but having an open source package format with multiple smalltalks in mind would be nice. (Even more nice would be having an open source multi smalltalk versioning system... imagine how nice would be if SqueakSource packages, and VW Public Store packages are accessible from the same public repository and versioning system).
- The integration with other tools could be really difficult
In VisualWorks you have tools to integrate an smalltalk application with the rest of the enterprise: webservices, ActiveX, JNIport. But in Squeak, no :( The webservices package seems to be unmaintained, and you have a great FFI support, but compared to Ruby or Python, the communication with systems in Java or C# requires a lot of work. For example, a lot of enterprises (Banks, travel agencies, etc) uses JavaEE for the middle tier. But there this is a potential market for Seaside in the web tier: the framework is superior and more flexible than JSP, Ruby On Rails or PHP. But is not easy to communicate your Seaside front end to the Java/C# backend. You can use and ad-hoc HTTP or plain socket messages, or buy a license of VW and use WebServices or RMI. But the immediate cost of this compared to just develop the web application in Java or JRuby, is difficult to justify.
Also integration from other applications to Smalltalk is difficult (a nice thing of GNU Smalltalk is that you could use the VM as a library in C -the people in VW is working in something similar, and I think that St/X also have something like this). Thanks to this Python became more popular: Python is used as scripting language in a lot of games because is really easy to integrate from C/ C++. (for example in Linux you could make an filesystem driver using Python and FUSE!)
Well that are to me aspects that we as developers can resolve, and can have impact on the whole community: with better integration with other systems, an small consultant could sell a Seaside based solution more easily. With tools to work on multiple smalltalks I think it would be less duplicated work, and more shared packages between smalltalk implementations.
On Jan 30, 2008, at 4:16 AM, Damien Cassou wrote:
Hi,
On Jan 29, 2008 11:45 PM, David Zmick dz0004455@gmail.com wrote:
I have been wondering how to make smalltalk a more "popular" language,
I can find different options:
- distribute flyers (http://damien.cassou.free.fr/)
- present Smalltalk/Squeak/Seaside
(https://svn.squeak.org/Advertisement/presentations/squeak_jm2l_en/)
- help people working on the Smalltalk entry point (the dev-images,
the documentation...)
- live on #squeak irc and answer questions
- develop programs with Smalltalk/Seaside and advertise
-- Damien Cassou
On Jan 31, 2008 11:12 AM, Diego Fernández diegof79@gmail.com wrote:
To me one of the issues that we have to attack to make Smalltalk more popular in the business arena is: isolation.
I mean, currently Smalltalk developments are "isolated" in two ways:
This is true and you make many other good observations. Since these tend to apply within just the world of Squeak and there exists a spectrum of funded entities it would seem that the prospects for improving the situation are better there. In order for that to happen some small group of people will have to decide that it's in their collective interests to establish and maintain a Squeak kernel. The only way for the Squeak Foundation to do this is to convince at least 3-4 of the highly visible projects - say Squeakland, Croquet, Seaside to commit to a common foundation. Personally, I'd rather see the Croquet Consortium taking the lead as I believe that 3D collaboration is the near-term future of programming and they represent the largest group of folk with something at stake. I've made this call in the past and gotten no response but remain confident that it will in some way shape or form happen because the cost of doing it isn't that high relative to the impact it could have for the primary stakeholder.
Cheers,
Laurence
- If you choose an Smalltalk, you can't migrate easily to another one.
The "core" framework is more or less the same for all Smalltalks (collections, streams, exceptions, SUnit). But when you start using another things like networking, databases, UI... porting from one Smalltalk to another still requires a lot of work.
Another issue on porting are tools for "source code packages". For example the code of Aconcagua (the unit framework created at Mercap), is very portable: it was created on VisualAge, and them ported to work on GemStone, Squeak and VisualWorks. Camp Smalltalk Rosseta was used to port the initial version from VAST to Squeak and VW, but the required work was not trivial, and maintaing "source code packages" for each Smalltalk flavor is really tedious.
I know that there is a Monticello package loader con VW Public Store, but having an open source package format with multiple smalltalks in mind would be nice. (Even more nice would be having an open source multi smalltalk versioning system... imagine how nice would be if SqueakSource packages, and VW Public Store packages are accessible from the same public repository and versioning system).
- The integration with other tools could be really difficult
In VisualWorks you have tools to integrate an smalltalk application with the rest of the enterprise: webservices, ActiveX, JNIport. But in Squeak, no :( The webservices package seems to be unmaintained, and you have a great FFI support, but compared to Ruby or Python, the communication with systems in Java or C# requires a lot of work. For example, a lot of enterprises (Banks, travel agencies, etc) uses JavaEE for the middle tier. But there this is a potential market for Seaside in the web tier: the framework is superior and more flexible than JSP, Ruby On Rails or PHP. But is not easy to communicate your Seaside front end to the Java/C# backend. You can use and ad-hoc HTTP or plain socket messages, or buy a license of VW and use WebServices or RMI. But the immediate cost of this compared to just develop the web application in Java or JRuby, is difficult to justify.
Also integration from other applications to Smalltalk is difficult (a nice thing of GNU Smalltalk is that you could use the VM as a library in C -the people in VW is working in something similar, and I think that St/X also have something like this). Thanks to this Python became more popular: Python is used as scripting language in a lot of games because is really easy to integrate from C/ C++. (for example in Linux you could make an filesystem driver using Python and FUSE!)
Well that are to me aspects that we as developers can resolve, and can have impact on the whole community: with better integration with other systems, an small consultant could sell a Seaside based solution more easily. With tools to work on multiple smalltalks I think it would be less duplicated work, and more shared packages between smalltalk implementations.
On Jan 30, 2008, at 4:16 AM, Damien Cassou wrote:
Hi,
On Jan 29, 2008 11:45 PM, David Zmick dz0004455@gmail.com wrote:
I have been wondering how to make smalltalk a more "popular" language,
I can find different options:
- distribute flyers (http://damien.cassou.free.fr/)
- present Smalltalk/Squeak/Seaside
(https://svn.squeak.org/Advertisement/presentations/squeak_jm2l_en/)
- help people working on the Smalltalk entry point (the dev-images,
the documentation...)
- live on #squeak irc and answer questions
- develop programs with Smalltalk/Seaside and advertise
-- Damien Cassou
Laurence Rozier wrote:
This is true and you make many other good observations. Since these tend to apply within just the world of Squeak and there exists a spectrum of funded entities it would seem that the prospects for improving the situation are better there. In order for that to happen some small group of people will have to decide that it's in their collective interests to establish and maintain a Squeak kernel. The only way for the Squeak Foundation to do this is to convince at least 3-4 of the highly visible projects - say Squeakland, Croquet, Seaside to commit to a common foundation.
But does *anyone* even have the slightest idea what that would entail? It sounds great as a theory but in practice I have never seen a setup that has worked across significantly different code bases. The only working granularity in my experience is the image and in practice that means that unless these projects share a common image (which I find highly unlikely given that it would imply decisions about, for example, the scope of Morphic supported in it) it seems almost impossible to get something like what you are describing going.
Cheers, - Andreas
On Jan 31, 2008 1:27 PM, Andreas Raab andreas.raab@gmx.de wrote:
Laurence Rozier wrote:
This is true and you make many other good observations. Since these tend to apply within just the world of Squeak and there exists a spectrum of funded entities it would seem that the prospects for improving the situation are better there. In order for that to happen some small group of people will have to decide that it's in their collective interests to establish and maintain a Squeak kernel. The only way for the Squeak Foundation to do this is to convince at least 3-4 of the highly visible projects - say Squeakland, Croquet, Seaside to commit to a common foundation.
But does *anyone* even have the slightest idea what that would entail?
Yes, I do but the price(both human and financial capital) is probably higher than any one entity can justify and it's not likely that the pain can be distributed evenly. Given a sufficient pile of euros, I know that this can be done. It's not a computer science or software engineering project but rather an engineering systems problem.
It sounds great as a theory but in practice I have never seen a setup that has worked across significantly different code bases. The only working granularity in my experience is the image and in practice that means that unless these projects share a common image (which I find highly unlikely given that it would imply decisions about, for example, the scope of Morphic supported in it) it seems almost impossible to get something like what you are describing going.
It is possible to craft an evolutionary plan to get to a viable common image, one that meets the needs of different projects. Similarly wrt VM issues. Initially some may have to do a bit more work than others and backward compatibility will have to be sacrificed in more cases than people would like but the premise is that the ends justify the means. Here's a thumbnail sketch of my scenario for addressing this: -Identify a minimal image from which each project could be built -Identify the major conflict areas -Identify what improvements to current tools(Spoon, Tweak, VMMaker, Delta Streams, Monticello and whatever else might help) are needed to build each project from the minimal image -Determine the implementation goals and phases(2-3 max) -Update the tools -Use the tools
Clearly there are lots of difficulties involved with this but I don't see how any of the problems won't yield to a determined pursuit along these lines. Plus such an effort would get Spoon or some derivative of it baked in which IMO is one of the best things that could happen to Squeak. There are many important areas that need to be explored. Your Morphic example is one - maybe it would be more effective to migrate from Morphic to Tweak and manually transition older work work - or leave it behind.
In another life, I was faced with a gear housing for a precision spacecraft mechanism whose main shaft bore was too large. Conventional wisdom says you can't make holes smaller and while good engineers know that in some situations you can build up material on the surface of this wasn't one of those times. There was no way to get new ones made and meet the launch schedule so I came up with a way to make the bearings that went in the bore larger. We made a precision tool that held and cooled the bearing while heating a thin precision-machined ring and slipping it over the bearing. Making and ring and tool was not a trivial project but it was doable and the stakes were high. I think the stakes are very high for the three projects(perhaps adding Sophie) I mentioned. While they're all likely to survive, if they don't expand their niches significantly, survival is all it will be and having experienced the difference over the past two decades I am in favor of paying the price for expansion. While Second Life isn't going anywherehttp://croquet.funkencode.com/2008/01/31/why-second-life-will-get-a-third-life/, there's still a significant window of opportunity for greatly expanding the presence of Squeak via Croquet. With well-integrated e-Toys, Seaside and other Squeak goodies Croquet will be strengthened while providing an expanded market for other Squeak projects. Other Smalltalks would have more incentive to join the party too.
Cheers,
Laurence
Cheers,
- Andreas
I agree Now we need people helping on that.
- If you choose an Smalltalk, you can't migrate easily to another one.
The "core" framework is more or less the same for all Smalltalks (collections, streams, exceptions, SUnit). But when you start using another things like networking, databases, UI... porting from one Smalltalk to another still requires a lot of work.
Another issue on porting are tools for "source code packages". For example the code of Aconcagua (the unit framework created at Mercap), is very portable: it was created on VisualAge, and them ported to work on GemStone, Squeak and VisualWorks. Camp Smalltalk Rosseta was used to port the initial version from VAST to Squeak and VW, but the required work was not trivial, and maintaing "source code packages" for each Smalltalk flavor is really tedious.
I know that there is a Monticello package loader con VW Public Store, but having an open source package format with multiple smalltalks in mind would be nice. (Even more nice would be having an open source multi smalltalk versioning system... imagine how nice would be if SqueakSource packages, and VW Public Store packages are accessible from the same public repository and versioning system).
- The integration with other tools could be really difficult
In VisualWorks you have tools to integrate an smalltalk application with the rest of the enterprise: webservices, ActiveX, JNIport. But in Squeak, no :( The webservices package seems to be unmaintained, and you have a great FFI support, but compared to Ruby or Python, the communication with systems in Java or C# requires a lot of work. For example, a lot of enterprises (Banks, travel agencies, etc) uses JavaEE for the middle tier. But there this is a potential market for Seaside in the web tier: the framework is superior and more flexible than JSP, Ruby On Rails or PHP. But is not easy to communicate your Seaside front end to the Java/C# backend. You can use and ad-hoc HTTP or plain socket messages, or buy a license of VW and use WebServices or RMI. But the immediate cost of this compared to just develop the web application in Java or JRuby, is difficult to justify.
Also integration from other applications to Smalltalk is difficult (a nice thing of GNU Smalltalk is that you could use the VM as a library in C -the people in VW is working in something similar, and I think that St/X also have something like this). Thanks to this Python became more popular: Python is used as scripting language in a lot of games because is really easy to integrate from C/C++. (for example in Linux you could make an filesystem driver using Python and FUSE!)
Well that are to me aspects that we as developers can resolve, and can have impact on the whole community: with better integration with other systems, an small consultant could sell a Seaside based solution more easily. With tools to work on multiple smalltalks I think it would be less duplicated work, and more shared packages between smalltalk implementations.
On Jan 30, 2008, at 4:16 AM, Damien Cassou wrote:
Hi,
On Jan 29, 2008 11:45 PM, David Zmick dz0004455@gmail.com wrote:
I have been wondering how to make smalltalk a more "popular" language,
I can find different options:
- distribute flyers (http://damien.cassou.free.fr/)
- present Smalltalk/Squeak/Seaside
(https://svn.squeak.org/Advertisement/presentations/squeak_jm2l_en/)
- help people working on the Smalltalk entry point (the dev-images,
the documentation...)
- live on #squeak irc and answer questions
- develop programs with Smalltalk/Seaside and advertise
-- Damien Cassou
I would like to help. But I don't know where to contribute. There is any effort to make something like a "multi-smalltalk source package"?
On Jan 31, 2008, at 6:35 PM, stephane ducasse wrote:
I agree Now we need people helping on that.
- If you choose an Smalltalk, you can't migrate easily to another
one.
The "core" framework is more or less the same for all Smalltalks (collections, streams, exceptions, SUnit). But when you start using another things like networking, databases, UI... porting from one Smalltalk to another still requires a lot of work.
Another issue on porting are tools for "source code packages". For example the code of Aconcagua (the unit framework created at Mercap), is very portable: it was created on VisualAge, and them ported to work on GemStone, Squeak and VisualWorks. Camp Smalltalk Rosseta was used to port the initial version from VAST to Squeak and VW, but the required work was not trivial, and maintaing "source code packages" for each Smalltalk flavor is really tedious.
I know that there is a Monticello package loader con VW Public Store, but having an open source package format with multiple smalltalks in mind would be nice. (Even more nice would be having an open source multi smalltalk versioning system... imagine how nice would be if SqueakSource packages, and VW Public Store packages are accessible from the same public repository and versioning system).
- The integration with other tools could be really difficult
In VisualWorks you have tools to integrate an smalltalk application with the rest of the enterprise: webservices, ActiveX, JNIport. But in Squeak, no :( The webservices package seems to be unmaintained, and you have a great FFI support, but compared to Ruby or Python, the communication with systems in Java or C# requires a lot of work. For example, a lot of enterprises (Banks, travel agencies, etc) uses JavaEE for the middle tier. But there this is a potential market for Seaside in the web tier: the framework is superior and more flexible than JSP, Ruby On Rails or PHP. But is not easy to communicate your Seaside front end to the Java/C# backend. You can use and ad-hoc HTTP or plain socket messages, or buy a license of VW and use WebServices or RMI. But the immediate cost of this compared to just develop the web application in Java or JRuby, is difficult to justify.
Also integration from other applications to Smalltalk is difficult (a nice thing of GNU Smalltalk is that you could use the VM as a library in C -the people in VW is working in something similar, and I think that St/X also have something like this). Thanks to this Python became more popular: Python is used as scripting language in a lot of games because is really easy to integrate from C/C++. (for example in Linux you could make an filesystem driver using Python and FUSE!)
Well that are to me aspects that we as developers can resolve, and can have impact on the whole community: with better integration with other systems, an small consultant could sell a Seaside based solution more easily. With tools to work on multiple smalltalks I think it would be less duplicated work, and more shared packages between smalltalk implementations.
On Jan 30, 2008, at 4:16 AM, Damien Cassou wrote:
Hi,
On Jan 29, 2008 11:45 PM, David Zmick dz0004455@gmail.com wrote:
I have been wondering how to make smalltalk a more "popular" language,
I can find different options:
- distribute flyers (http://damien.cassou.free.fr/)
- present Smalltalk/Squeak/Seaside
(https://svn.squeak.org/Advertisement/presentations/squeak_jm2l_en/)
- help people working on the Smalltalk entry point (the dev-images,
the documentation...)
- live on #squeak irc and answer questions
- develop programs with Smalltalk/Seaside and advertise
-- Damien Cassou
2008/1/31, Diego Fernández diegof79@gmail.com:
To me one of the issues that we have to attack to make Smalltalk more popular in the business arena is: isolation.
I mean, currently Smalltalk developments are "isolated" in two ways:
- If you choose an Smalltalk, you can't migrate easily to another one.
The "core" framework is more or less the same for all Smalltalks (collections, streams, exceptions, SUnit).
That's not my experience from working on Seaside. At the end of the day we had to define our own string conversion methods, everything else would not fly. We probably will also have to the same for number conversions. Strings beyond ASCII are inherently unportable, this of course includes conversion from bytes to Strings. There is a subset of collections that is portable, it's just unclear what it is. And this is only the case if you don't target GemStone, then you might actually want specialized collections. Then there are also the places where you have to work around bugs in the Squeak weak array finalization and closure implementation. The same goes for exceptions and streams and a lot of other things like chronology and object initialization and other stuff that I consider "core". All IO in inherently unportable. A lot of reflection is unportable. And worst thing is there is now way of telling whether or not your code is portable.
To sum it up: writing portable Smalltalk code is not trivial. Years have been invested into increasing the portability of Seaside and there still is a very long way to go.
But when you start using another things like networking, databases, UI... porting from one Smalltalk to another still requires a lot of work.
Another issue on porting are tools for "source code packages". For example the code of Aconcagua (the unit framework created at Mercap), is very portable: it was created on VisualAge, and them ported to work on GemStone, Squeak and VisualWorks. Camp Smalltalk Rosseta was used to port the initial version from VAST to Squeak and VW, but the required work was not trivial, and maintaing "source code packages" for each Smalltalk flavor is really tedious.
I know that there is a Monticello package loader con VW Public Store, but having an open source package format with multiple smalltalks in mind would be nice. (Even more nice would be having an open source multi smalltalk versioning system... imagine how nice would be if SqueakSource packages, and VW Public Store packages are accessible from the same public repository and versioning system).
- The integration with other tools could be really difficult
In VisualWorks you have tools to integrate an smalltalk application with the rest of the enterprise: webservices, ActiveX, JNIport.
Do you mean webservices or WS-*? WS-* interoperability is a problem with every implementation. But that has to do with WS-*. What in general is a problem with Smalltalk is calling Smalltalk from C (from a non-Smalltalk thread). I don't know if the callback patches from Andreas fix this.
Cheers Philippe
But in Squeak, no :( The webservices package seems to be unmaintained, and you have a great FFI support, but compared to Ruby or Python, the communication with systems in Java or C# requires a lot of work. For example, a lot of enterprises (Banks, travel agencies, etc) uses JavaEE for the middle tier. But there this is a potential market for Seaside in the web tier: the framework is superior and more flexible than JSP, Ruby On Rails or PHP. But is not easy to communicate your Seaside front end to the Java/C# backend. You can use and ad-hoc HTTP or plain socket messages, or buy a license of VW and use WebServices or RMI. But the immediate cost of this compared to just develop the web application in Java or JRuby, is difficult to justify.
Also integration from other applications to Smalltalk is difficult (a nice thing of GNU Smalltalk is that you could use the VM as a library in C -the people in VW is working in something similar, and I think that St/X also have something like this). Thanks to this Python became more popular: Python is used as scripting language in a lot of games because is really easy to integrate from C/ C++. (for example in Linux you could make an filesystem driver using Python and FUSE!)
Well that are to me aspects that we as developers can resolve, and can have impact on the whole community: with better integration with other systems, an small consultant could sell a Seaside based solution more easily. With tools to work on multiple smalltalks I think it would be less duplicated work, and more shared packages between smalltalk implementations.
On Jan 30, 2008, at 4:16 AM, Damien Cassou wrote:
Hi,
On Jan 29, 2008 11:45 PM, David Zmick dz0004455@gmail.com wrote:
I have been wondering how to make smalltalk a more "popular" language,
I can find different options:
- distribute flyers (http://damien.cassou.free.fr/)
- present Smalltalk/Squeak/Seaside
(https://svn.squeak.org/Advertisement/presentations/squeak_jm2l_en/)
- help people working on the Smalltalk entry point (the dev-images,
the documentation...)
- live on #squeak irc and answer questions
- develop programs with Smalltalk/Seaside and advertise
-- Damien Cassou
On Jan 31, 2008, at 7:26 PM, Philippe Marschall wrote:
2008/1/31, Diego Fernández diegof79@gmail.com:
To me one of the issues that we have to attack to make Smalltalk more popular in the business arena is: isolation.
I mean, currently Smalltalk developments are "isolated" in two ways:
- If you choose an Smalltalk, you can't migrate easily to another
one.
The "core" framework is more or less the same for all Smalltalks (collections, streams, exceptions, SUnit).
That's not my experience from working on Seaside. At the end of the day we had to define our own string conversion methods, everything else would not fly. We probably will also have to the same for number conversions. Strings beyond ASCII are inherently unportable, this of course includes conversion from bytes to Strings. There is a subset of collections that is portable, it's just unclear what it is. And this is only the case if you don't target GemStone, then you might actually want specialized collections. Then there are also the places where you have to work around bugs in the Squeak weak array finalization and closure implementation. The same goes for exceptions and streams and a lot of other things like chronology and object initialization and other stuff that I consider "core". All IO in inherently unportable. A lot of reflection is unportable. And worst thing is there is now way of telling whether or not your code is portable
Well my experience was the same. :) Not in Seaside, but writing code that works on VAST and GemStone. When I was at Mercap we have worked on the same things that you mention: strings, collections, IO, and also exceptions (GemStone has another exception mechanism). We don't have problems with String conversion, but with exceptions and numbers (scaled decimals and fractions).
At Smalltalks 2007 in Buenos Aires, I saw a video introducing the "resurrection" of the ansi smalltalk effort. There is any link to read more? I only found this: http://smalltalk.gnu.org/wiki/ansi-smalltalk-home-page
To sum it up: writing portable Smalltalk code is not trivial. Years have been invested into increasing the portability of Seaside and there still is a very long way to go.
But when you start using another things like networking, databases, UI... porting from one Smalltalk to another still requires a lot of work.
Another issue on porting are tools for "source code packages". For example the code of Aconcagua (the unit framework created at Mercap), is very portable: it was created on VisualAge, and them ported to work on GemStone, Squeak and VisualWorks. Camp Smalltalk Rosseta was used to port the initial version from VAST to Squeak and VW, but the required work was not trivial, and maintaing "source code packages" for each Smalltalk flavor is really tedious.
I know that there is a Monticello package loader con VW Public Store, but having an open source package format with multiple smalltalks in mind would be nice. (Even more nice would be having an open source multi smalltalk versioning system... imagine how nice would be if SqueakSource packages, and VW Public Store packages are accessible from the same public repository and versioning system).
- The integration with other tools could be really difficult
In VisualWorks you have tools to integrate an smalltalk application with the rest of the enterprise: webservices, ActiveX, JNIport.
Do you mean webservices or WS-*? WS-* interoperability is a problem with every implementation. But that has to do with WS-*. What in general is a problem with Smalltalk is calling Smalltalk from C (from a non-Smalltalk thread). I don't know if the callback patches from Andreas fix this.
Sorry I don't know what is the difference between "webservices" and "WS-*", could you explain me more? I have created "webservices" (using WSDL and SOAP) clients and servers using VAST and VW. The experience with VW was nice (compared with the complexity of VAST). But all my work was on VAST, I only used VW to check the interoperability and to do some experiments. And yes I had some interoperability problems :( (working with WSDL and SOAP is a pain in the... well you know), but in the end I workaround that problems using coarse interfaces and simple data types (for example SOAP arrays never worked to me so I have to declare a sequence and implement it).
I wrote that in my previous mail because every time that I talk with friends of mine working with Java, they are always trying new web frameworks (tapestry, wicket, struts, etc), to leverage the pain that is to develop with Servlets. So I think that if there is a good way to call Java EJBs from Squeak, they would be attracted to replace the web front end with Seaside. (but this is my conclusion, based on some conversations with friends and my assumptions, maybe the people at Cincom have analyzed the market and have another conclusions).
Cheers, Diego
Cheers Philippe
But in Squeak, no :( The webservices package seems to be unmaintained, and you have a great FFI support, but compared to Ruby or Python, the communication with systems in Java or C# requires a lot of work. For example, a lot of enterprises (Banks, travel agencies, etc) uses JavaEE for the middle tier. But there this is a potential market for Seaside in the web tier: the framework is superior and more flexible than JSP, Ruby On Rails or PHP. But is not easy to communicate your Seaside front end to the Java/C# backend. You can use and ad-hoc HTTP or plain socket messages, or buy a license of VW and use WebServices or RMI. But the immediate cost of this compared to just develop the web application in Java or JRuby, is difficult to justify.
Also integration from other applications to Smalltalk is difficult (a nice thing of GNU Smalltalk is that you could use the VM as a library in C -the people in VW is working in something similar, and I think that St/X also have something like this). Thanks to this Python became more popular: Python is used as scripting language in a lot of games because is really easy to integrate from C/ C++. (for example in Linux you could make an filesystem driver using Python and FUSE!)
Well that are to me aspects that we as developers can resolve, and can have impact on the whole community: with better integration with other systems, an small consultant could sell a Seaside based solution more easily. With tools to work on multiple smalltalks I think it would be less duplicated work, and more shared packages between smalltalk implementations.
On Jan 30, 2008, at 4:16 AM, Damien Cassou wrote:
Hi,
On Jan 29, 2008 11:45 PM, David Zmick dz0004455@gmail.com wrote:
I have been wondering how to make smalltalk a more "popular" language,
I can find different options:
- distribute flyers (http://damien.cassou.free.fr/)
- present Smalltalk/Squeak/Seaside
(https://svn.squeak.org/Advertisement/presentations/squeak_jm2l_en/)
- help people working on the Smalltalk entry point (the dev-images,
the documentation...)
- live on #squeak irc and answer questions
- develop programs with Smalltalk/Seaside and advertise
-- Damien Cassou
About porting: I'd like to emphasize Sport portability library, which is intentionally developed to ease porting by providing portable classes for times, files and sockets. Thanks to Sport we were able to port Swazoo web server and AIDA/Web framework easily around many Smalltalks: Squeak, VW, Dolphin, Gemstone. And it seems GST won't be a problem too. It is so useful that we base our forthcoming Aida/Scribo CMS on top of Sport completely, again with an ease of porting as main goal.
Anyone interested look into:
http://www.squeaksource.com/SPort/Sport-2.031.mcz
Janko
Diego Fernández wrote:
On Jan 31, 2008, at 7:26 PM, Philippe Marschall wrote:
2008/1/31, Diego Fernández diegof79@gmail.com:
To me one of the issues that we have to attack to make Smalltalk more popular in the business arena is: isolation.
I mean, currently Smalltalk developments are "isolated" in two ways:
- If you choose an Smalltalk, you can't migrate easily to another one.
The "core" framework is more or less the same for all Smalltalks (collections, streams, exceptions, SUnit).
That's not my experience from working on Seaside. At the end of the day we had to define our own string conversion methods, everything else would not fly. We probably will also have to the same for number conversions. Strings beyond ASCII are inherently unportable, this of course includes conversion from bytes to Strings. There is a subset of collections that is portable, it's just unclear what it is. And this is only the case if you don't target GemStone, then you might actually want specialized collections. Then there are also the places where you have to work around bugs in the Squeak weak array finalization and closure implementation. The same goes for exceptions and streams and a lot of other things like chronology and object initialization and other stuff that I consider "core". All IO in inherently unportable. A lot of reflection is unportable. And worst thing is there is now way of telling whether or not your code is portable
Well my experience was the same. :) Not in Seaside, but writing code that works on VAST and GemStone. When I was at Mercap we have worked on the same things that you mention: strings, collections, IO, and also exceptions (GemStone has another exception mechanism). We don't have problems with String conversion, but with exceptions and numbers (scaled decimals and fractions).
At Smalltalks 2007 in Buenos Aires, I saw a video introducing the "resurrection" of the ansi smalltalk effort. There is any link to read more? I only found this: http://smalltalk.gnu.org/wiki/ansi-smalltalk-home-page
To sum it up: writing portable Smalltalk code is not trivial. Years have been invested into increasing the portability of Seaside and there still is a very long way to go.
But when you start using another things like networking, databases, UI... porting from one Smalltalk to another still requires a lot of work.
Another issue on porting are tools for "source code packages". For example the code of Aconcagua (the unit framework created at Mercap), is very portable: it was created on VisualAge, and them ported to work on GemStone, Squeak and VisualWorks. Camp Smalltalk Rosseta was used to port the initial version from VAST to Squeak and VW, but the required work was not trivial, and maintaing "source code packages" for each Smalltalk flavor is really tedious.
I know that there is a Monticello package loader con VW Public Store, but having an open source package format with multiple smalltalks in mind would be nice. (Even more nice would be having an open source multi smalltalk versioning system... imagine how nice would be if SqueakSource packages, and VW Public Store packages are accessible from the same public repository and versioning system).
- The integration with other tools could be really difficult
In VisualWorks you have tools to integrate an smalltalk application with the rest of the enterprise: webservices, ActiveX, JNIport.
Do you mean webservices or WS-*? WS-* interoperability is a problem with every implementation. But that has to do with WS-*. What in general is a problem with Smalltalk is calling Smalltalk from C (from a non-Smalltalk thread). I don't know if the callback patches from Andreas fix this.
Sorry I don't know what is the difference between "webservices" and "WS-*", could you explain me more? I have created "webservices" (using WSDL and SOAP) clients and servers using VAST and VW. The experience with VW was nice (compared with the complexity of VAST). But all my work was on VAST, I only used VW to check the interoperability and to do some experiments. And yes I had some interoperability problems :( (working with WSDL and SOAP is a pain in the... well you know), but in the end I workaround that problems using coarse interfaces and simple data types (for example SOAP arrays never worked to me so I have to declare a sequence and implement it).
I wrote that in my previous mail because every time that I talk with friends of mine working with Java, they are always trying new web frameworks (tapestry, wicket, struts, etc), to leverage the pain that is to develop with Servlets. So I think that if there is a good way to call Java EJBs from Squeak, they would be attracted to replace the web front end with Seaside. (but this is my conclusion, based on some conversations with friends and my assumptions, maybe the people at Cincom have analyzed the market and have another conclusions).
Cheers, Diego
Cheers Philippe
But in Squeak, no :( The webservices package seems to be unmaintained, and you have a great FFI support, but compared to Ruby or Python, the communication with systems in Java or C# requires a lot of work. For example, a lot of enterprises (Banks, travel agencies, etc) uses JavaEE for the middle tier. But there this is a potential market for Seaside in the web tier: the framework is superior and more flexible than JSP, Ruby On Rails or PHP. But is not easy to communicate your Seaside front end to the Java/C# backend. You can use and ad-hoc HTTP or plain socket messages, or buy a license of VW and use WebServices or RMI. But the immediate cost of this compared to just develop the web application in Java or JRuby, is difficult to justify.
Also integration from other applications to Smalltalk is difficult (a nice thing of GNU Smalltalk is that you could use the VM as a library in C -the people in VW is working in something similar, and I think that St/X also have something like this). Thanks to this Python became more popular: Python is used as scripting language in a lot of games because is really easy to integrate from C/ C++. (for example in Linux you could make an filesystem driver using Python and FUSE!)
Well that are to me aspects that we as developers can resolve, and can have impact on the whole community: with better integration with other systems, an small consultant could sell a Seaside based solution more easily. With tools to work on multiple smalltalks I think it would be less duplicated work, and more shared packages between smalltalk implementations.
On Jan 30, 2008, at 4:16 AM, Damien Cassou wrote:
Hi,
On Jan 29, 2008 11:45 PM, David Zmick dz0004455@gmail.com wrote:
I have been wondering how to make smalltalk a more "popular" language,
I can find different options:
- distribute flyers (http://damien.cassou.free.fr/)
- present Smalltalk/Squeak/Seaside
(https://svn.squeak.org/Advertisement/presentations/squeak_jm2l_en/)
- help people working on the Smalltalk entry point (the dev-images,
the documentation...)
- live on #squeak irc and answer questions
- develop programs with Smalltalk/Seaside and advertise
-- Damien Cassou
my options
have fun. learn a lot invent the future and have fun. implement your dreams and have fun. All the rest is less important :)
On Jan 30, 2008, at 8:16 AM, Damien Cassou wrote:
Hi,
On Jan 29, 2008 11:45 PM, David Zmick dz0004455@gmail.com wrote:
I have been wondering how to make smalltalk a more "popular" language,
I can find different options:
- distribute flyers (http://damien.cassou.free.fr/)
- present Smalltalk/Squeak/Seaside
(https://svn.squeak.org/Advertisement/presentations/squeak_jm2l_en/)
- help people working on the Smalltalk entry point (the dev-images,
the documentation...)
- live on #squeak irc and answer questions
- develop programs with Smalltalk/Seaside and advertise
-- Damien Cassou
Hi david
This is wonderful. I would love to be 14 y old. Open squeak red everything and again and again. Then fix it. Propose better implementation idea. Imagine you can learn a lot. I would love to be able to do that.
Then to answer your question: - everyday everybody can something with his own strength - have fun - we are writing other books some people are developing cool software (seaside and others).
There are quite large application in Smalltalk, JPMorgan, Gemstone.... but indeed we have to face it the road is long.
Stef
On Jan 29, 2008, at 11:45 PM, David Zmick 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. :)
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