Ameliorating/refactoring Squeak

Fri Apr 27 18:15:14 UTC 2001

Sorry, I am in conversation with myself again (that's because I like so much the
company of intelligent people).
Actually, the Squeak Foundation could do something very important here: hire
somebody to review and reject/approve the patches/goodies, test (and regression)
test them on multiple platforms, then incorporate them into the core. It would
still not be as good as many users, but it would force everyone into a user once
they are incorporated.
This could all happen on multiple branches as well.
I am sure this would increase developer satisfaction and productivity, as well
as the quality of the Squeak platform in general. It would still not bring us
new users though and eventually we need them.

Florin

mateoc_florin at jpmorgan.com on 04/27/2001 01:44:23 PM

Please respond to squeak at cs.uiuc.edu

To:   squeak at cs.uiuc.edu
cc:   (bcc: Florin X Mateoc)
Subject:  Re: Ameliorating/refactoring Squeak

Hi,

Like many others on this list, I know exactly what you are saying, but I have no
idea on how to improve things, because what we need is users (one can only
develop in the void for so long) and I don't know how to get them.
The problem, as I see it, is that we are not (nor do we have) a community of
users (or application developers), who might be interested in a specific
functionality or improvement. It would be those users (or application developers
working on top) of the main system who would be interested to test and take
improvements even when not radiating from the center. Then they would give us
feedback and multiple virtuos circles would emerge.
Instead, we all are ring 1 developers, only willing to try new things coming
from ring 0, so the only chance to get our code tested (and maintainable) is if
ring 0 accepts it in the core and pushes it outside. I don't think there is much
else ring 0 can do for us. As an example, some time ago I sent some code
directly to Dan Ingalls. He was very nice (he always is) and he posted it to the
list saying it was interesting and asking people to test it. Although this was
coming from Ring -1 Himself, nobody replied. I guess nobody went to the trouble
of manually filing it in, trying to understand it, trying to break it and so on.
And I am not better than enybody else here. I noticed similar things happening
with other people's code and I did not find the time to do testing, debugging.
And this is because I am not a user of the system, but a developer and in the
little spare time that I have I prefer to do my own hacking.
I hope the Squeak Foundation can come up with some answers but I doubt it. I
think the only real hope is that Squeak becomes a Disney success story as a
kid's learnig/playing tool. Then we'll have all the users we want (need).

Florin

wuyts at iam.unibe.ch on 04/27/2001 10:22:12 AM

Please respond to squeak at cs.uiuc.edu

To:   squeak at cs.uiuc.edu
cc:   (bcc: Florin X Mateoc)
Subject:  Ameliorating/refactoring Squeak

Hello,
The last days I am thinking about lots of things in Smalltalk, Smalltalk
communities, Smalltalk development environments, ... You could call this an
existential problem, only that it has to do with Smalltalk, and not so much
with my 'inner self'.

It's not that I am posing questions whether or not to keep on using
Smalltalk. Quite the contrary: I have been using it for 8 or 9 years now,
and its conceptual beauty still strikes me regularly. So, the question is
not whether or not to keep on using Smalltalk, but what to do with it.

Personally, what I typically end up doing is to clean up parts of it. Every
time I have to implement something, I sooner or later end up making bigger
or smaller refactorings in the System itself (as well as in my code of
course). While this pleases me enormously (it makes it far more conceptually
esthetic), I never know what to do with these changes afterwards. Sometimes
I send them to the list here, but they are not included with the base
release. Note that this is no remark whatsoever against Squeak central (they
already do a terrific job, for which I am very thankful); I completely
understand that they have other goals and do not have the manpower to try
and integrate such changes. However, the net result is that these
'ameliorations/refactorings/...' are forgotten over time.

After discussing with Stephane Ducasse (my colleague here in Bern), he
created the Swiki pages to note these kinds of things. And we are in contact
with John Sarkela to add to the Stable Squeak effort. But still...

Is there anything that can be done ? Am I just to overly aesthetic ? Did I
overlook a special prefix that I can use to send this kinds of things in the
mailing list ? Do they have a chance to be included if I make them for the
latest Squeak versions ? Etc etc etc

--
Roel Wuyts                           Software Composition Group
Roel.Wuyts at iam.unibe.ch         University of Bern, Switzerland
Board member of the European Smalltalk User Group: www.esug.org

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