Hi,

<snip>
>thing is, I agree with nearly all of your sentiments. There is
>one point I want to make very strongly however - It is
>important to make the base of the pyramid as large as
>possible, by whatever means we have.
>
>What I mean by this is, neither you nor anyone else knows
>where the next great programming ideas will come from. Out
>of 5000 people that look at Squeak, only 10 may turn out
>to usefully enhance it. The point is, you don't know who those
>ten will be, or what attracted them. Worse, you won't even
>be able to predict what sort of background these people will
>have. (Heck, Alan Kay has a background in molecular biology,
>and I assume you are a lawyer. And me, I do neuroscience).

<big snip>

In general I agree (though we can skip the black label edition).  The 
more users the faster things will improve.  I'm sure that most of us have 
been on the receiving end of the creativity of the users of our programs. 
 Everything from "wow, I never thought of that, that's cool" to "you are 
doing what!?!?!?  That's a hideous bug your taking advantage of and we 
removed it for the next version..."

cheers

bruce