[Newbies] Hi squeak mailing list

Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas offray at riseup.net
Sat Dec 10 16:13:42 UTC 2016


Welcome Owen!

These questions has been raised time and again, with long discussions 
and pretty exaggerated statements, like Smalltalk is dead[1][2] and 
interesting conversations about why it didn't become mainstream, or how 
its ideas have mutated and live in pretty successful products like 
containers (ie: docker). I recommend you to check tose lins.

[1] http://wiki.c2.com/?WhyIsSmalltalkDead

[2] 
https://gemstonesoup.wordpress.com/2009/02/08/smalltalk-is-dead-long-live-smalltalk/


In my case, I found Squeak 10 years ago, I had some teaching experience 
using Etoys, Scracth and Bots Inc for a couple of years and to research 
on my master studies, now I came back since mid 2014 with Pharo[3] 
making the research for my PhD [4]. In the last ESUG 2016, the Squeak 
team celebrated the 20 years with the release of the 5.0 version with a 
lot of improvement. I was really glad to be there and see this vibrant 
community and be part of it.

[3] http://pharo.org/
[4] http://mutabit.com/grafoscopio/index.en.html

On the hardware question, there was some SqueakNOS (if I remember 
correctly) for Squeak No Operative System that runs directly on 
hardware, but that seems like a long path for me. My idea would be to 
put it as an additional app that runs with the rest of your 
tablet/phone/laptop and progressively provides a coherent experience for 
the fractured world of computing.

Pharo/Smalltalk is the environment I feel most empowered these days and 
because of the "native live coding" experience, I can make agile 
prototypes of ideas and evolve them. We have a recurrent Critical 
Code+Data Literacy & Visualization workshop [5], so I can share the joy 
of Smalltalk with other learners and bridge it with current themes and 
issues where I think that Smalltalk ideas are particularly well suited: 
data activism, data visualization, reproducible research, data driven 
storytelling, modeling, open government and others.

[5] http://mutabit.com/dataweek/

So, despite of not being mainstream, I think that Smalltalk ecosystem is 
pretty vital and healthy, we can share the joy with others and learn 
with them without too much concern about popularity*

Welcome again,

Offray


* Popularity seems a recurrent concern in United States culture, as the 
popular TV shows and movies show all the time, and the cliche story 
moment where everybody needs to acknowledge some personal, romantic or 
other achievement and clap... but maybe mainstream TV shows, Cinema and 
news are not the proper view point for culture :-)

On 10/12/16 09:37, blubee blubeeme wrote:
> Hello
>
> I recently came across Alan Kay's talks on youtube, then that lead me 
> to Dan Ingalls and looking at smalltalk, squeak and object oriented 
> programming as thought up by Alan Kay in the 1960s.
>
> I wonder how come this type of computing isn't the mainstream. We've 
> seen other OS pop up since then that were a lot less capable that got 
> some mainstream success.
>
> It seems like this type of computing gets put in the kiddy corner and 
> most people don't know about it or those who do kinda use it and 
> sometimes people just don't seem to get it.
>
> Has anyone ever though about making a platform where squeak is 
> customized to the hardware, something like android, iphone, bb10 and 
> qnx, etc..
>
> Also if this is the wrong mailing list, can you point me at the 
> correct mailing list for this discussion.
>
> Best,
> Owen
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Beginners mailing list
> Beginners at lists.squeakfoundation.org
> http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners

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