Starting bi-monthly report! And cheers to Stef! (was Re: A roadmap for 3.9)

goran.krampe at bluefish.se goran.krampe at bluefish.se
Tue Dec 14 14:09:06 UTC 2004


Hi folks!

Trying desperately to catch up my email... Just had to throw in some
cheerful words here.

=?ISO-8859-1?Q?st=E9phane_ducasse?= <ducasse at iam.unibe.ch> wrote:
> Hi andreas
> 
> We had some discussions this afternoon (instead of inventing our future 
> we talked about the cool situation that we have now in squeak, it was 
> of course not productive) concerning this paragraph:
> 
> > When I read your roadmap, it becomes clear that your major goal is to 
> > transform Squeak into something that you can do systems research in. 
> > Your priorities show this clearly - from MC in the base image, over 
> > RB, traits, new compiler, system dictionary refactoring is everything 
> > aimed at defining a playground for systems and software engineering 
> > research. There is nothing wrong with this particular direction but 
> > *please* keep in mind that there are other interests in the Squeak 
> > community besides yours and that people with other interests have 
> > other priorities. Most importantly for those "other" people is 
> > stability of the base system.
> 
> We clearly understand that other people get other needs and we are 
> extremely cautious about that.
> 
> Now if you think that rbengine, mc, traits, new compiler is about 
> research then this is really sad for all of us. For us those

Hmmm:
- RB is used by many AFAIK, can't be called research.
- MC is definitely used by many and not research in the slightest.
- Traits is IMHO a really nice thing for moving Squeak forward and I
have been hoping for it every since Nathanael presented it on OOPSLA a
long time ago. I just hope it will be put forward soon as a proposal for
going official.
- New compiler is simply a Good Thing. Sure, it seems to be slower and
has poor error reporting - but things are fixable I guess. And since it
enables real closures (right?) it seems like a rock solid good thing.

Anyway, Stef - let me just say that I *highly appreciate* all work being
done. I am of the viewpoint after many years in the Squeak community
that people *trying* to improve stuff should be applauded and aided even
if they sometimes move in directions I personally might not have chosen.
I simply am confident that it will turn good in the end, as long as
people are trying. :)

> are just tools so that we can work faster/better and that the community 
> as a whole get improved. For us those are simple
> tools that we can use to create other more powerful ones, make the code 
> better, manage the image better....
> So I can't really know what to say to that. Really I'm was destroyed 
> and extremely sad today (may be I'm too tired).

Take a deep breath (1,2,3) exhale... And cheer up. :)

> Stef

Now - trying to recover my loss of email I have come to a conclusion. :)
The list is just too darn active these days. That is of course a good
thing. But I think we need a bimonthly report. (weekly is too often and
monthly to seldom).

So what I will do is this: I will start by writing it for the coming 14
days. So my first report will come out just after christmas. Then I
might do the next one too. I am hoping to be able to form a small group
of editors so that can take turns - anyone interested in helping me?
Just email me.

The idea is that as the current editor you collect squeak-dev (and
possibly other lists, but that is just icing on the cake) and write
"summaries" for each thread. The summaries doesn't really have to
summarize - just indicate what the hell was discussed and possibly
decided. And after 14 days you simply post the report to the list with a
nice [BIMONTHLY] in front so that people can find it. And we can also
smack them onto minnow, and on SqP in fact - yup, that would be nice.

Hopefully such a report will make life a lot easier for many people
trying to keep up with all things going on.

regards, Göran



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