I want to document but I need to learn first!
Alan Kay
Alan.Kay at squeakland.org
Wed Mar 12 03:26:17 UTC 2003
I would tend to agree. I like the limitations. But, in this case, I
want to reach everyone, including those that don't want interesting
challenges for every little thing.
Cheers,
Alan
-----
At 5:38 PM -0500 3/11/03, Swan, Dean wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
>> From: Alan Kay [mailto:Alan.Kay at squeakland.org]
>> Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2003 10:19 AM
>> To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
>> Subject: RE: I want to document but I need to learn first!
>
>
>> So the people who have been very successful at etoys are those that
>> are comfortable with any limited palette they are given. This has to
>> be widened before we can declare etoys to be a real release.
>
>Hi Alan,
>
> You know, this could also be interpreted as a feature rather
>than a limitation. It's been my experience that constrained
>resource environments encourage "better" design. In an environment
>where resources are abundant, there tends be little "competitive
>pressure" in the sense of survival-of-the-fittest type evolutionary
>pressure, so people may "get the job done", but not necessarily in
>an elegant or efficient manner.
>
> I don't think modern systems take up megabytes of memory and
>millions of lines of code so much because that's what is needed to
>get the job done as because we can and it's "easy". It seems that
>this has actually led to less code re-use, lower quality software,
>and unmanageable quantities of it.
>
> I don't imagine you need much convincing on this point, but I
>get the impression that this point of view is not widely held. I
>just wanted to mention it so you will think as much about what to
>leave out as about what to add.
>
> I could site endless examples to support this idea: The Alto
>and the original 128k Mac come to mind. I've often felt that the
>most amazing things are accomplished when resources are very limited
>and the people doing the work don't know any better.
>
> -Dean Swan
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