Classical Applications (was Re: 17 new updates)

Stefan Matthias Aust sma at kiel.netsurf.de
Sat Feb 13 11:13:06 UTC 1999


Bijan Parsia is talking about the self-centric world view of Smalltalk (pun
intended) in general and Squeak in special.  He's probably right in
describing Squeak as a personal medium for a personal view to the world.

Unfortunately, this is what I would call the false safty of an ivory tower.
 (No, I'm pretty sure that I cannot beat you in rhetoric unless we switch
to German language, but I'll try hard :-) 

And this is what I call a toy.  This term isn't meant negative or to value
it against other terms like tools.  A toy is just a device you'll use to
play or explore.  It's self-centric and exist only for this purpose.   A
tool on the other hand is created with a special goal in mind, it's a
helper-device to achieve this goal.

Therefore I respect the Squeak Central's goal of creating a device for
again creating an "exquisite *personal* computing system" but also see a
chance for Squeak to become a tool for different goals.

>Where *is* this demand? Who is it demanded of? Perhaps you meant 'need'?
>'Niche'? 'Market space'?

Demand in the sense that from time to time people asking in this list.
Perhaps request is the better term here.  Then it's my conclusion and guess
that there's also a need and perhaps even a marke space.

>Strange enough, the people I've "won over" to Squeak were *all* "ordinary
>people". 

Again, ordinary people has no negative meaning for me.  Perhaps "normal
people" would have been the better term.  It's my idea of normal people
that they just want to solve some problems using the programming language
as a ready-to-use tool instead of spending much time in adapting the tool
first. 

Let's say the goal is to write a simple card stack application with an
Explorer-like interface and drag and drop suport, printing and database
storage.  I can do this in a few hours in VisualBasic (Bill Gates can do
everything in VB in just one week end, but that's a different story).  This
language is very well tailored to solve this kind of problems and I get the
immediate feedback of sucess when delivering that application (to others or
to myself).

To do the same application in Squeak, I've to create a tree view widget,
printing support, a database interface and so on. Much more difficult.


bye
--
Stefan Matthias Aust  //  Don't talk.  Just doIt.





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