Hello Cees,
At 09:03 21-1-02 +0100, you wrote:
Maarten Maartensz maartens@xs4all.nl said:
What IS the purpose of the Squeak Foundation maillist?
Discuss the Squeak Foundation. Duh. The Squeak Foundation, like - say - the Apache Foundation or maybe the Open Office Foundation (IIRC - that now has StarOffice under its wings), should be the "official" organization representing Squeak (development, some products, whatever). This list is
there
to discuss how the SqF should work, behave, look, feel, whatever.
Good. So brainstorming is to the point. Here are two follow-up questions, simply to straighten out the facts:
(1) How is the current Squeak-Foundation related to current Squeak-Central? (2) How is the current Squeak-Foundation related to the recent passing away of Squeak-Central from Disney?
Reason for my questions: There is little point trying to set up a Foundation if the Central - where most coding and coordinating still happens - has other plans or targets than the planned Foundation.
Remark A: Get Squeak into regular university-courses!
Yup. It's a-happening (Georgia), but only slowly.
Well, my general point was not that it is not anywhere in a university (or poly-technic), but that to promote and help Squeak a major and explicit goal of those wishing to promote it should be to get it somehow into the universities. The reason this is so important is that this works like a seed for many more things.
[snip]
And as long as this does not happen, Squeak is bound to remain an effort by a few handfuls of enthusiast hacking types, that remains almost unconnected to "the Real World of C and Java", that are taught in very many universities (and indeed seem to me mostly a waste of time, for nearly anyone, especially anyone not concerned with writing commercial applications but with doing real science - but this one cannot prove without Squeak being present in regular university courses next to C and Java).
I agree that teaching Java in a University (opposed to, say, the 'higher professional technical schools' - HTS, HIO - we have in the Netherlands) is a waste of time. But then, no-one is interested in academic knowledge anymore, it's all about being able to write 'Drs' (Master) in front of your name for a faster career launch in business...
Well - I've been thrown twice out of the University of Amsterdam for protesting the decline of the Dutch universities, but in the end I did get to be a drs. though not in philosophy but in psychology (and then in fact mostly in mathematics and physics - and yes, I also have a B.A. in philosophy).
"And so it goes" - except that I don't believe that if most people "democratically" desire to be rich, irresponsible and stupid all people should conform, and indeed once in a - largish - while I do meet students who are genuinely into academic knowledge. I do grant their IQs tend to be over 150 or so (i.o.w. they are 1 in 10.000 - and mostly as amazed as I was when I entered universities in the 70ies and found it dedicated to furthering the ends of .... the communist party, the more lunatic feminist fringe etc.) But these few are the people I am interested in, and not in the post-modern average uncivilized Dutch dummy, proud of being an uncivilized financial go-getter. (Remember: I am in my 50-ies. I still had to learn 5 foreign languages in grammar school; I still had to learn grammatical Dutch, history, mathematics, physics etc. Younger Dutchmen didn't, and don't know and can't judge what they miss. Indeed, most of them don't read books at all, academic or not, and are PROUD of it. The average IQ of the post-modern Dutch academic is 115, which in my time was some 15 points too low to enter grammar school, and far too low to graduate from a university - pre-post-modern style. And no: I don't believe a high IQ is a guarantee of anything, except in the way that being over 2 meters tall will - ceteris paribus - tend to help you make a career in basketball, unfair as this is for those of 1.65 m.)
And one of the reasons I am interested in Squeak is that I am interested in trying to tide over what remains of genuine academics through the current Post-Modern Dark Age. Also, inside the universities there still are some who try to do the same, though mostly indeed in the genuine sciences and mathematics, and in things requiring real brains and real work, like sinology or medicine. For them, as for me, a really good and versatile programming environment like Squeak could be (but is not yet) would be a truly excellent tool to think with and publish with (rather than write a commercially selling application with, which doesn't interest me at all).
Indeed, if I were convinced that "no-one is interested in academic knowledge anymore" I would give up on Squeak also. (Note for Dutchmen: Read the columns of Vincent Icke in the NRC-Handelsblad. He is a theoretical physicist of similar concerns, outlook, and age.)
But I do think that if you were to show MatMorphs to some selected people, you'd stand a good chance of arousing their interest ;-)
True - but when I prodded the Argentinians to update their work so that it does work in the current Squeak (so that I could show it to some mathematical friends) I got no reply. (And currently I assume they are trying to remain alive, queueing up to get a few pesos from the bank, and awaiting the next Videla.)
Remark B: Put some really good general documentation together, maintain it and update it regularly!
Point taken. Squeak has been lacking in the area of 'first user experience'. On the other hand, everything is moving so fast that the books that have been published are outdated 1.5 seconds after they go to the printer. The solution is probably to have the documentation in the image, but in a format that people can print out if they care to (a lot of them do).
Yes and no. The solution I see is to FIRST write a good and complete documentation for the current Squeak and THEN maintain it. This must be a coordinated effort by a number of capable people, and not what is happening on the Swikis, which is far too random by too many people of too different levels and kinds of ability and interest. (You also can't compile a medical manual from the random conversations on a medical congress, however clever, and learning medicine that way will take you a life-time, at least. But that IS the current level of promoting and teaching Squeak: Through mostly random electronic conversation.)
The best effort in this direction, and probably the best hope, is what Tansel Ersavas is doing with Squeak News.
Remark C: "Internet communities" are mostly would-be: Get some real people together!
Agreed. I have had the best results by a combination of live meetings and
then
using the Internet to continue from there. However, meeting face-to-face is expensive (we could organize a "Dutch Squeak User's Group" meeting with the snap of the finger, but still traveling expenses in such a small country
could
be too high for some poor student - or do they still get free public transpor?. Imagine a "German Squeak User's Group" meeting...), and a virtual community is better than no community at all. We'll have to make-do with it for a majority of the work...
Mostly true, but my point is this. One of the many things I have been - see above - is "a student leader" (around 1980 - and before that I was a farmhand in Norway) and a considerable amount of what happens on the Squeak and Smalltalk lists is similar to what I saw in my student days: Would-be radicals posturing inside small communities with radical proposals and ideologies to Save the World - who mostly turn out too afraid and timid to really DO something that might harm their own private career-interest ("IMHO").
What is needed - in a truly awful but modern phrase - ("IMHO") is people with "Leadership Potential", and these you can only find by meeting them face to face. (The Charisma Factor doesn't tend to shine brightly through e-mail!) And I agree that once you've found them you don't need many more meetings, but I believe that until you've found them you won't lift Squeak from where it is now.
Speaking for myself, after 6 months of dedicated reading of the Squeak maillist, I still know hardly anything of the academic qualifications, outlook, concerns, or ages of hardly anyone on the list. Well: That may be a quite sufficient basis for mailing about programming and developing a programming language, but is not a sufficient basis for getting something done in real life in real society.
Regards,
Maarten.
------------------------------------------ Maarten Maartensz. Homepage: http://www.xs4all.nl/~maartens/ ------------------------------------------