Hi all

Sorry I will not argue again. I do not have the energy. Bye. you WON!

> The essential answer to this has already been posted by Andreas:
>
> http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2004-December/ 
> 085923.html
>
> Especially problematic are the "researchers" items:
>
> 1) new compiler framework
> 2) refactoring of SystemDictionary
> 3) Traits

These three items are not about research
1) is needed but may be people do not care that we get UI dependency in  
parser.

2) I proposed a precise roadmap (now what can I say more than that)

3) it is fun that alan kay mentioned Traits in his turing award talk  
and that other languages
such as Slate, perl, Scala and getting traits and we will not.


Sorry guys, I'm fed up. So I give up. Do what you want.
And martin you can have exigence but in that case you should have the  
money...

Good luck boys

Stef


>
> Here is what I think about these:
>
> 1) I don't want to comment much on the compiler framework, except that  
> I think that it is critical to get this done properly, if it goes in.
>
> 2) The ongoing attempt of refactoring SystemDictionary seems to be an  
> odyssey without much planning so far. This is not the right way to do  
> a "refactoring" of a kernel part.
>
> 3) Traits is a questionable language extension. It is questionable  
> because language extensions to Smalltalk themselves are questionable.
>
> Here are Squeak's current problems ordered by importance:
>
> 1) library
> 2) speed
> 3) documentation
> 4) community organization
> 5) public relations and awareness
> 6) language
>
> I am not going to bet on the exact order of 2 to 5 but I think it is  
> clear that "library" is THE problem. Far behind at the end comes  
> "language", simply because Smalltalk is still one of the best, if not  
> the best programming language.
>
> Smalltalk has a remarkable cost-performance ratio. Every addition to  
> the language may worsen this ratio. Yet half of all people tend to ask  
> the question:
>
> - What benefit has the language extension/change?
>
> But this is the wrong question. With this kind of judgement Squeak's  
> way is paved to a concept-overloaded monster like Java.
>
> Instead we should ask:
>
> - What real problem does the language extension/change solve?
>
> A real problem is of course not meant to be the absence of a benefit  
> in a specific situation, the type of advantage the first question is  
> about.
>
> A real problem of a language is one that is ubiquitous when  
> programming in that language, something which occurs literally every  
> line, which really goes straight to the heart of its basic mechanism.
>
> I think it will be really difficult to uncover and to distill such a  
> core problem in Smalltalk and it is my conviction that Traits is not  
> solving such a main problem.
>
> As a consequence I think we should not include Traits into the  
> official release. Instead I guess some people would like to see a  
> specific "researchers edition" of Squeak from the Berne group.
>
> This could be a fork in the sense of Avi's suggestion of having  
> "recurring forks" - tall narrow trees with stubby branches coming off  
> it at every level:
>
> http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2004-December/ 
> 086612.html
>
> regards,
> Martin
>
>